The present tense as a mark of evidentiality and intersubjectivity in Spanish

Abstract For some time now, studies about evidentiality have begun to explore the link between the grammatical coding of information sources and the expression of tense and aspect. Within this line of research, it is worth highlighting the works that have recently described the evidential nature of future. Our paper will present a study which delves deeper into this field of study, focusing on the interaction between evidentiality and grammatical present. Taking specific works as a reference and adopting a cognitive point of view, we will try to provide evidence that the present can assume evidential values – above all, visual and inferential ones – in Spanish. Our analysis will be exemplified by certain uses of perception verbs, which illustrate the interaction of tense, (inter)subjectivity and the information source in a particularly clear way.