The Sinhala hearsay evidential
Abstract Colloquial Sinhala is unusual among Indo-Aryan languages in having an evidential system. By means of the hearsay particle lu, the system opposes reportative to evidentially unmarked utterances. Drawing on attested utterances from corpora and grammaticality/acceptability judgments, we describe the distribution of this particle with particular reference to its overlap with the most commonly occurring complementizer, kiyǝlaa. We show that the characteristics of the Sinhala evidential system generally conform to cross-linguistic trends, but the particle has a relatively wide distribution syntactically. From a discourse perspective, it acts as both a reportative and a quotative marker, marks both direct and indirect speech, and performs specific functions such as marking adages and indicating mention use. Unsurprisingly, it carries distinct semantic-pragmatic overtones of dubiousness, which affect clause interpretation. We set forth this basic description as a foundation for future detailed description and analysis of this evidential particle.