This book is a comprehensive study of the evidential system in German. It presents a systematic
description of the encoding of evidentiality in present-day German as well as a diachronic
reconstruction of the relevant sources and paths of grammaticalization from the Old High German
period onwards.Based on empirical corpus research the study investigates the degree of
grammaticalization of each single evidential construction and the make-up of the present-day
system as well as the diachronic stages that lead to the present state. The book focuses on
three main issues. First it is concerned with the general notion of evidentiality its deictic
character and with the interrelations between the domains of evidentiality and epistemic
modality. Second the book presents the results of the synchronic corpus-based analysis of the
German evidential periphrastic constructions werden 'become' + infinitive scheinen 'seem'
drohen 'threaten' versprechen 'promise' + zu 'to'-infinitive which constitute a paradigm for
coding evidentiality in Present Day German. Third the diachronic development of the evidential
constructions is represented as a complex grammaticalization process interacting with the
development of modal constructions and leading to a highly differentiated category of modal and
evidential distinctions in the grammar of German.
