Emerging epistemic marking in Indo-Aryan Palula

While evidentiality is neither systematically nor obligatorily signaled in Indo-Aryan
Palula [phl; phal1254] (Pakistan), it can be observed in so-called scattered
coding. It is most obviously reflected in three sub-systems of the language: a) as
a secondary effect of tense—aspect differentiation, mostly clearly seen in the use
of the perfect for indirect evidence vis-à-vis the use of the simple past for direct
evidence; b) by a set of utterance-final mood markers, involving an emerging
three-way paradigmatic contrast: thaní as quotative, maní as hearsay and ɡa as inferred
knowledge; and c) by (at least) one member of a set of second-position discourse
particles, xu, marking surprise. Although evidentiality contrasts akin to the perfect
vs. simple past were indeed part of the ancestral Indo-Aryan tense system, there
are plenty of parallels in adjacent languages to the epistemic contrasts noted for
Palula, suggesting that more recent language contact must have contributed to, or
largely facilitated, the emergence of epistemic marking in the language.