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The Mirative and Its Interplay with Evidentiality in the Tibetan Dialect of Tabo (Spiti)

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The Mirative and Its Interplay with Evidentiality in the Tibetan Dialect of Tabo (Spiti) This publication is supported by La Trobe University Linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman Area Volume 30.2 — October 2007 http://www.latrobe.edu.au THE MIRATIVE AND ITS INTERPLAY WITH EVIDENTIALITY IN THE TIBETAN DIALECT OF TABO (SPITI) Veronika Hein University of Berne [email protected] This article presents different mirative constructions found in Tabo Tibetan. It mainly focuses on two morphemes which can express mirativity. Their usage and possible connotations are described and they are also discussed in their relationship to the complex evidential system of this dialect. Keywords: Mirative, Tabo Tibetan, mirative morphemes, connotations, evidential system. 1. INTRODUCTION The Tibetan dialect spoken at Tabo1 in the lower Spiti Valley in Himachal Pradesh, India (see map), shows a fully developed mirative with its specific set of mirative morphemes. This seems to be a new phenomenon in the Tibetan dialects described so far, as the miratives found in most descriptions of Tibetan appear to be a semantic extension of the system of evidentiality. In this paper I intend to trace a possible development from one of those well-known mirative constructions into the mirative morpheme found in Tabo Tibetan. I will go on to show that this basic mirative morpheme only occurs with some limited groups of verbs (all non-control verbs and some verbs of motion) and that a kind of parallel morpheme has been found to work in the remaining groups 1 The Tabo dialect of Tibetan will be referred to as Tabo Tibetan in this paper. The examples have all been collected from my main informant Sonam Tsering of Tabo Village. 195 196 Veronika HEIN of verbs (mainly control verbs) as what I call an “extended mirative”. The extended mirative is in fact a sort of emphasis which serves to express the speaker’s disagreement with the action denoted by the verb. Mirative morphemes as I understand them can also be part of an inferential verb phrase. In such a function they have to be seen as part of the system of evidentials. In order to clarify the position of the mirative morphemes in Tabo Tibetan with respect to the category of evidentiality I will attempt an overview of evidentiality in this dialect in the terminology suggested by Aikhenvald (2003) and have a closer look at inferential verb forms with and without mirative morphemes. Map of Spiti with Tabo Village and adjacent areas of Lahaul and Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh, India. (Drawing Ch. Jahoda, Vienna) 2. EVIDENTIALITY IN TABO TIBETAN The evidential system of Tabo Tibetan was first published in Hein (2001). In Table 1, the evidential categories distinguished in the 2001 publication are used again as they are in Table 2 of this paper. But the order of the evidential categories has been changed in order to facilitate a comparison with the categories found in Aikhenvald (2003). In my 2001 version, the different categories of evidentiality are arranged in Mirative in Tabo Tibetan 197 decreasing order with respect to how close the focus is to the speaker. That means that in my system it is not only the source of knowledge which is a part of evidentiality (as in Aikhenvald’s system), but also the speaker’s involvement. In Hein (2001) the first category of evidentiality is also “Focus on the speaker’s involvement”. But the second one is “Focus on the speaker’s perception”, as in this category the speaker’s involvement is considered to be higher than in “Focus on speaker’s unspecified knowledge” (category III) and “Focus on speaker’s inferred knowledge” (category IV). As can be seen in Table 1, the speaker’s perception can be either visual or auditory (which includes all other sensory perception). The choice between a) visual or b) auditory is determined pragmatically in the first place, but I think control verbs2 more frequently take auxiliary morphemes of subcategory a) and non- control verbs auxiliary morphemes of subcategory b). According to my understanding of the categories of evidentiality set up in Aikhenvald (2003), Tabo Tibetan can be seen as a “three-term system” of evidentiality. The first two categories in Table 1 are the default categories (with a distinction of person, i.e. speaker versus non- speaker focus); category III on the other hand distinguishes visual evidence and non-visual (auditory and other sensory) evidence. And IV can easily be identified as inferred evidence. 2 For a definition of the terms control and non-control, cf. Huber (2005: 84). “Control is an important semantic distinction in the verbal system. Each verb is either controllable or non-controllable, as part of its lexical properties. If the action expressed by the verb is usually carried out intentionally, that is, if the person doing it can control the action, then the verb is considered controllable. (…) If, on the other hand, a verb expresses events or states that usually cannot be controlled, then it is considered a non-controllable verb.” 198 Veronika HEIN Categories I II III IV of Focus on Focus on Focus on Focus on evidentiality speaker’s speaker’s speaker’s speaker’s involvement unspecified perception inferred knowledge a) visual knowledge b) auditory Tense/ aspect Present/ im- -et -kak/-ak a) -tuk/-uk -ken jinkak̠ perfective b) -arak -ken jinuk̠ -ken jindarak̠ Future/ im- -in -kak/-ak -tɕe jinkak̠ perfective -kajin >-ken -na jinkak̠ Present/ per- -deret -dekak a) -deruk fective -peret -pekak -peruk b) -derak -perak Past/ per- -wajin > -wa ak > a) -soŋ -wa jinkak̠ > fective -wen -wak b) (?)-tɕuŋ -anak -wa jinuk̠ > -anuk Table 1. The evidential markers of Tabo Tibetan. 3. THE MIRATIVE IN TIBETAN DIALECTS Aikhenvald (2003: 15) comments on the peculiarities of the different evidential systems: “... Inferred evidentials in systems with more than two terms may even acquire mirative connotations.” This may also be the case in some Tibetan dialects in which the visual evidential markers seem to be interpreted as miratives, as in example (1), a Ladakhi example taken from Bielmeier (2000: 104), citing Koshal (1979: 186). (1) ŋa rdemo duk I.ABS beautiful.ABS be ‘I am beautiful (on the basis of seeing oneself in the mirror etc.).’ Mirative in Tabo Tibetan 199 What Bielmeier describes as “unexpected information” or “mirativity” can be seen as a semantic extension of evidentiality. I would suggest such a phenomenon to be termed “mirative connotation”. In Tabo Tibetan on the other hand there is a proper mirative with its own markers quite distinct from evidentials. And as I will show in sections 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 of this paper, Tabo mirative markers, like markers of modality (e.g. intentional modality), can interact with evidentiality. This interaction can be seen in examples (22)-(25) for inferential statements below. Different miratives in Tibetan dialects termed “révélatif/ admiratif” are presented in Tournadre (1996). From the given material, I want to take a closer look at the Ladakhi mirative marker tsʰuk (Tournadre 1996: 209, citing Koshal 1979: 217-25). In Koshal’s description of the usage of -tsʰuk, there are two surprising points. The first is the fact that she finds a split in Ladakhi between the use of -tsʰuk with third person subjects and its use with second person subjects in affirmative sentences. In sentences with third person subjects, -tsʰuk can be added to “reportive” present and past verb forms in narratives, whereas in sentences with second person subjects the same morpheme renders a mirative meaning. This kind of split between third person and second person is unusual in Tibetan. Example (2) shows one of Koshal’s Ladakhi miratives (Koshal 1979: 223, in adapted transcription). (2) kʰyo-raŋ ʂpe-tɕa ɲo-jin-jot-pin-tsʰuk you.SG.DIR book.DIR buy.REP.PRES.CONT ‘Oh! you were buying a book.’ I will come back to the Ladakhi mirative in section 5.1.2 below. 4. THE BASIC MIRATIVE MORPHEME -saŋ 4.1 Examples In Tabo Tibetan the mirative morpheme -saŋ is usually added to a non- control verb, as illustrated in (3). The utterance is used to show the speaker’s surprise when discovering a state of affairs or development not noticed before. This kind of expression of surprise is only possible in a situation in which a new fact has just come to the speaker’s 200 Veronika HEIN attention. It always expresses the speaker’s new knowledge. That is why (4) is not possible. In (4), the discovery and the surprise connected with it are stated to have occurred ‘yesterday’; it therefore is no longer new. But, as is shown in (5), -saŋ can be used in a slightly different function. In sentence (5), the mirative morpheme is used with the control verb ‘to go’. As nɖo̠ ‘to go’ has an irregular perfective stem pu̠t-, the verb stem required in this mirative construction can be identified. Because the verb ‘to go’ belongs to the category of control verbs, apart from surprise, the semantic content of the verb phrase includes a certain disagreement with the action denoted by the verb. This aspect will be taken up again in section 5. The third point to be made about pu̠t-saŋ-nuk in (5) is the fact that the mirative morpheme -saŋ can be followed by an auxiliary morpheme. Here it is followed by -nuk, a contraction of -jin-uk, the second part of which usually expresses the speaker’s visual perception. Thus pu̠t-saŋ- nuk can be understood as an inferential construction: ‘From what the speaker saw (then) and doesn’t agree with, he must have gone.’ Such combinations of auxiliary morphemes will be discussed in more detail in section 5 of this paper. As I understand sentences (4) and (5) they are meant to be about the same incident, and only an inferential verb phrase establishing some link with the present may contain -saŋ, which needs to refer to new information.
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