Informing verbs as markers of evidentiality in contemporary Spanish

The aim of this research is to identify the preferential tense forms and syntactic constructions of informing verbs in the indicative mood in Spanish. The paper examines the semantic and morphological features of the evidential speech verbs “decir” (to say), “informar” (to inform), “afirmar” (to affirm), “comunicar” (to communicate), introducing statements with direct and indirect quotation in Spanish-language discourse. The research is carried out on the material of the Spanish National Corpus CORPRES XXI. The paper presents an analysis of the frequency of use of these verbs in Spanish-speaking countries. The results of a comparative analysis of the selected informing verbs in condicional de rumor (“the conditional of rumor” – a type of verb tense/mood used to convey someone else’s opinion or statement, the authenticity of which depends on some condition), in futuro de conjetura (“the future of conjecture” – a type of verb tense/mood used to convey assumption and probability), as well as in impersonal constructions are presented. The scientific novelty of the research lies in the fact that the potential of informing verbs in Spanish as lexical means of expressing indirect evidentiality, verified on the basis of data from the Spanish National Corpus, has been determined. As a result of the research, it was found out that the verb “decir” is the most frequent and neutral verb introducing other people’s speech, and as an evidential marker is mostly used in impersonal constructions, as well as in condicional de rumor.