In this paper, I present an analysis of the discourse particle punyain Colloquial Malay as a modal evidential. I claim that the use of punyaindicates that the attitude holder is certain about the truth of the propositional content of the utterance and that the source of the information presented is of the inferential type. I show that the attitude holder may be the speaker or the external argument of verbs of saying and believing. The proposed analysis connects punyawith epistemic modal auxiliaries such as English mustand Colloquial Malay preverbal modal mesti, both of which mark the attitude holder's certainty as well as the inferential nature of the evidence for the asserted proposition. However, unlike epistemic must/mesti, which may appear in questions under certain aspectual conditions, punyacannot appear in questions. I claim that punyadiffers from must/mestiin who can be considered the attitude holder of the evidence/knowledge. In particular, while the attitude holder of a must/mestistatement can be a contextually relevant group that is indeterminate, this is not possible for a punyastatement. I argue that this difference is the source of the contrasting behaviors of punyaversus must/mestiin questions. The current analysis adds to the empirical base on the crosslinguistic patterning of the connection between modality and evidentiality and has implications on the notion of "evidential perspective shift."

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