ABSTRACT
The Japanese evidential particle no has received considerable attention in the formal and descriptive literature, but there is no consensus on how to distinguish it from and connect it to the homophonous complementizer typically occurring in no-da (COMP-COP) constructions. Based on observations on various uses, I argue that the particle no can be sharply distinguished from the complementizer and analyze it as an utterance modifier introducing an evidence condition parallel to that on assertion but requiring mutually accessible evidence. On the background of comparison with COMP-COP constructions in other languages, I propose that evidential no has developed from the complementizer in bridging contexts of evidence-based inference.
