Analytic forms expressing evidential meanings in the Ingush verb system

Abstract

The research aims to clarify the analytic forms expressing evidential meanings in the Ingush verb system and interpret these meanings. The paper examines evidentiality as a universal grammatical category and the ways it is implemented in the Ingush language. The main focus is on the grammatical means of actualizing evidential meanings, namely, the analytic forms of the Ingush verb. The work identified analytic forms of the perfect and pluperfect tenses expressing meanings of witnessed and hearsay actions, conveying direct and indirect evidentiality. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that it explores the functioning of analytic verb forms with evidential meanings based on the material of the Ingush language, literary and folklore texts. As a result, it was found that in the Ingush language, there are grammatical ways of expressing evidential meanings, which are actualized by analytic forms of the verb. The realization of meanings of witnessed and hearsay actions depends on the auxiliary verb and its tense form. Direct (immediate) information is transmitted by the analytic perfect form with the auxiliary verbs ‘да’, ‘далла’, ‘латта’, while hearsay actions, i.e., indirect (mediated) evidentiality, are realized by the analytic pluperfect with the auxiliary verbs ‘далла’, ‘латта’ and ‘хила’, as well as by the analytic perfect with the verb ‘хила’.