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The study focuses on dedicated grammatical evidentials and evidentiality strategies in the two main dialects of Livonian -Courland and Salaca Livonian. The analysis of Livonian evidentiality is based on a model originally proposed by Rätsep (1971) for Estonian, which posits two subsystems of reported evidentiality -the reported indicative (oblique mood) and the reported imperative (jussive).The study shows that evidentiality in Livonian -despite the intense and longlasting contacts of this language with Latvian (resulting in heavy structural borrowing in many domains of grammar) and its close genetic relatedness to Estonian -manifests a rather unique configuration of structural features. The most striking of them is that the present tense forms of the Livonian reported indicative are expressed by means of agent nouns agreeing in number with the subject NP. It is argued that this type of evidentiality coding is typologically very rare.

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The Estonian subdialect Kihnu, Latvian and Kuronian Livonian share a type of interrogative containing morphemes whose primary function is to mark 3rd person imperatives. This construction is not attested in other Estonian dialects or in Standard Estonian, other than in some petrified idioms. In Kihnu and Latvian, the question type is used for deliberative questions. This interrogative type may have originally been used as a translation of German Konjunktiv in embedded interrogatives, but by the desubordination process, it has spread to main clauses as well. This the most probable scenario for Estonian (Kihnu subdialect). Contacts between Kihnu and Livonian and Latvian have probably reinforced this interrogative type in terms of structural relevance and usage frequency.