This paper proposes a new experimental paradigm for exploring lexical expressions that transfer diverse forces of speaker commitment in modals and evidentials, showing its utility on a comparison of German and English. It tests which tools speakers use to commune a proposal under varying evidential situations. In a set of three studies, it tests the force of the resulting listener belief in a proposal, the force of the inferred speaker commitment to that proposal, and the force of the inferred evidence for the proposal, upon observing varied evidentially marked utterances about that proposal.