Evidential Determiners in Nivaĉle

Earlier work on Nivaĉle (Mataguayan, Argentina and Paraguay) claims that the determiners na, ja, and ca introduce entities that are known by the speaker, while pa is used for entities that are unknown or are known by report. On the basis of fieldwork, I argue that the primary distinction is instead one of evidentiality, defined as the encoding of source of information. The determiners na, ja, and ca indicate the speaker has or had firsthand sensory evidence for the existence of an entity, where the preferred evidence type is visual. Conversely, pa is used whenever the speaker lacks that type of evidence.