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This paper attempts to explain the terminological and conceptual confusion of evidentiality and epistemic modality. It presents a functionally oriented semantic analysis which does not belong to a specific theoretical framework. It shows that the alleged epistemic speaker commitment of evidential expressions does not come from the specific evidential value or mode of information, but rather boils down to the speaker's and hearer's interpretation of the source of information. A source of information can be attributed different degrees of reliability, but these should not automatically be translated into degrees of epistemic speaker commitment. The latter involves an evaluation of the likelihood, which is quite different from the evaluation of the reliability of the source of information. Thus, the account presented here challenges previous analyses in which the labels "epistemic" and "evidential" are applied to linguistic expressions either in too broad a way or in too exclusive a way. The analysis also contrasts with accounts based on the "inclusion" or the "overlap" of the two categories. Finally, the paper also discusses Nuyts' (2004) claim that a clause can only have one qualification at a time.

Insubordinate constructions have been argued to derive from regular subordinated clauses through ellipsis of the matrix clause (Evans, 2007). However, ellipsis in actual discourse has not yet been systematically studied with respect to its potential as a source of functionally specialized insubordinate constructions. This paper aims to fill this gap, by examining complementizer-initial dyadically dependent clauses (i) in a corpus of online question--answer interactions in Spanish, French, German and English and (ii) in natural conversation in Spanish and English. Dyadically dependent clauses have a complementizer in sentence-initial position. They lack an explicit matrix, but can be construed as dependent on a matrix from the previous turn. According to Evans' hypothesis, they should be a potential source for true complementizer-initial insubordinate constructions. Our analysis shows that dyadically dependent clauses develop specialized discourse functions, involving the organization of textual and interpersonal relations. If such functions are conventionalized, this would result in true insubordinate constructions. Next, we look for actual functional overlap between the dyadically dependent clauses in our data and attested insubordinate constructions in the four languages studied. Functional similarities between dyadically dependent clauses and insubordinate constructions are found for optative insubordinate constructions in Spanish, French and German, for discourse-connective insubordinate constructions in Spanish, English and German, and for copying insubordinate constructions in Spanish and English.