The discourse functions of simple copulas in Dzongkha
The marking on copular verbs in Tibetic languages is regarded as an exemplar of egophoricity, although the extent to which it has been grammaticalized varies between languages. Dzongkha, a southern Tibetic language, is somewhat atypical of the egophoric pattern in the sense that the basic opposition in copulas exhibits a mirative pattern, wherein the non-mirative (egophoric) copula occurs with all grammatical persons in declaratives and interrogatives, and the mirative (non-egophoric) occurs with the 3rd person and rarely with 1st and 2nd persons. The conversational data studied for this paper also show that the speaker need not take knowledge stances that bifurcate the world between objectively ‘old’ and ‘new’ knowledge and the attendant associations of knowledge with a particular grammatical person. Rather, the speaker’s representation of events is subjective, and dependent, in part, on the knowledge stances between speaker and respondent. What is in view in conversational interaction are the social goals of the conversation – assertions, face-saving strategies, and arriving at mutually shared knowledge – and the Dzongkha copulas are a manipulable linguistic resource in achieving these.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.An overview
- 2.1Background information on Dzongkha
- 2.2Typological overview
- 3.A basic egophoric vs. mirative opposition?
- 4.Linguistic categories as an interactional resource
- 5.A subjective system of representation
- 5.1Subjective representation with equative copulas
- 5.2Subjective representation with existential copulas
- 6.Questions that seek specific information and their responses
- 6.1The equative ‘ing in Q-word questions
- 6.2The equative îmme in Q-word questions
- 6.3The auxiliary me in polar questions
- 6.4The interrogative ′mo in Q-word questions
- 6.5Summary of equative copulas in Q-word questions
- 7.Questions seeking confirmation and their responses
- 7.1Confirmation questions with yö ′mo
- 7.2Confirmation questions with dû ′mo
- 7.3Confirmation questions with ong ′mo
- 8.Conclusion
- Notes
- Abbreviations
- Author queries
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References