Evidentiality is one of my favourite features of language. English
has different grammatical forms of verbs for tense (past, present and
future), but some languages also have different grammatical forms
depending on the source of knowledge about an event. If you saw
something, heard someone talk about it or known it as a common fact,
you’ll use different forms of a verb in some languages. In fact, about a
quarter of the world’s languages do this. the family of Tibetan
languages are one such group of languages. A lot of the details of these
systems is still poorly understood. In 2014 Nathan Hill and I ran a
workshop on the topic, and we’re pleased to announce that there is now
an edited book on the topic.
This book contains chapters that
describe the evidential systems of particular languages, including
Lhasa Tibetan, Emigre Tibetan, Purik Tibetan, Denjongke, Dzongkha, Amdo
Tibetan, Zhollam Tibetan and Pingwu Baima. There are also chapters that
focus on historical development of evidentiality in the area, or on
specific features, I have one on egophoric evidentials, Nathan has one
on the perfect experiential and there’s one on the different uses of the
verb snang in different varieties. There’s also a typological
overview of Tibetan evidentiality from Nicolas Tournadre. The book
should be available from research libraries!
Bonus facts:
It
only took around three years from workshop to publication, which is
pretty speedy in academia. We’re pretty thrilled that we get to share
this work.
I wrote the index for the book. It’s the first index
I’ve ever done, and quite possibly the last. It was a difficult (but
rewarding) task, and gave me some interesting insights into the book.
This edited volume brings together work on the evidential systems of Tibetan languages. This includes diachronic research, synchronic description of systems in individual Tibetan varieties and papers addressing broader theoretical or typological questions. Evidentiality in Tibetan languages interacts with other features of modality, interactional context and speaker knowledge states in ways that provide important perspectives for typologists and our general understanding of evidential systems. This book provides the first sustained attempt to capture this complexity and diversity from both a synchronic and diachronic perspective.
