Lhasa Tibetan evidentiality #
Lhasa (Standard Spoken) Tibetan marks evidentiality in its final auxiliaries, fused with tense
and aspect, and the same contrast runs through the copulas and the imperfective, so the forms
are given here in the perfective. Sensory -song marks an event the speaker perceived through
any of the senses, and -bzhag one inferred from direct knowledge of its result, the only
dedicated inferential in the paradigm. The so-called factual -pa red is read three ways:
Tournadre and LaPolla take it to mark factual access, with all report on the suffix -za;
DeLancey's later account glosses it indirect, covering hearsay, inference and general
knowledge; and Zeisler, with Garrett, shows it used for generic and shared knowledge, for inferences
and assumptions of high certainty and for unattributable hearsay, with -za (the depleted
verb zer 'say') reserved for attributable report. Under Aikhenvald's parameters that is
assumption and hearsay for -pa red and quotative for -za, which the inventory records.
Aikhenvald herself, following DeLancey's earlier description of -song against -pa red,
reads the perfective as a firsthand non-firsthand system and confines evidentiality proper
to it. The egophoric -pa yin, yin and yod, and -byung with the speaker as goal of the
event, mark personal involvement rather than source: for Aikhenvald the copular opposition
yin red, yod 'dug is an evidentiality strategy, and for Zeisler the egophoric
factual contrast is a dimension of speaker stance that the source parameters do not carve.
Neither is in the inventory.
References #
The perfective evidentials sensory -song, inferential -bzhag and factual -pa red, and the quotative -za.
Equations
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