Evidential constructions in Ghanaian parliamentary discourse: a corpus-based diachronic analysis (2005–2024)

Abstract

While previous studies have examined various aspects of Ghanaian parliamentary discourse, little attention has been paid to evidential constructions. To address this gap, this corpus-based study examines four first-person evidential constructions ( I think , I believe , I know , I mean ) in Ghanaian parliamentary discourse and traces changes in their functions over time. A corpus of 1,729 parliamentary Hansards (41.7 million words) spanning 2005–2024 was processed using Python 3.11 on Google Colab. Findings show that subjective inference markers ( I think , I believe ) are dominant, while the direct evidence marker ( I know ) and the discourse repair marker ( I mean ) were less frequent. A diachronic functional analysis shows systematic changes in the functions of these markers over time, with chi-square tests confirming statistically significant differences in the frequencies of these markers across five electoral periods. The findings contribute to understanding how evidential practices evolve in parliamentary discourse, highlighting gradual shifts in communicative strategies.