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Thewo Tibetan’s /ta33/ and /nə33/

A narrative exploration of how temporal space and verbal semantics interact with evidentiality

| Lanzhou University
This paper has three aims. First, in its form, this paper uses a narrative style to overtly highlight the iterative process used to identify the meaning of the two suffixes in question. Second, this paper seeks to describe the intricate workings of two verbal suffixes in Thewo Tibetan. Finally, this paper makes a defense of why these two suffixes belong to the category of evidentiality. Thewo Tibetan is spoken in China on the Gansu-Sichuan border. The suffixes /ta33/ and /nə33/ appear either directly after action verbs, or directly after the progressive aspect marker. /nə33/ is used to express that the speaker has sensory information of their claim at the time of the speech act. The temporal nature of the evidence, whether it is sensory information of the act itself or of the results of the act, is determined in part by the semantics of the verb (telic vs non-telic). In contrast, /ta33/ is used to express that at the time of the speech act, the speaker no longer has sensory evidence (but formerly did) of the stated action. Based upon these observations, this paper argues that temporal space and verbal semantics are key to understanding the cognition which underlies interpreting /nə33/ and /ta33/. As such, this paper makes the following three contributions: (1) In its form it provides an anecdote of failures and success along the path to identifying the function and meaning of two evidential suffixes; (2) It introduces two suffixes of the hitherto un-described Thewo Tibetan evidential system; and (3) It gives an in-depth analysis of these suffixes and offers evidence to support the claim that they are evidential suffixes.
Keywords: Thewo Tibetan, evidentiality, telicity, verbal semantics, mirativity
Article outline
  • 1.Background
  • 2.Overview of the Thewo Tibetan verbal system
  • 3.Thewo Tibetan’s evidential suffixes
  • 4.First observation
  • 5.First hypothesis
  • 6.First test
    • 6.1Story 1
    • 6.2Story 2
  • 7.Second observation
  • 8.Second hypothesis
  • 9.Second test
    • 9.1Stories 1–2 revisited
    • 9.2Volition and non-volition with the first person
    • 9.3Volition and non-volition with the second person
    • 9.4Non-volition with the third person
    • 9.5A weather example
  • 10.Updated hypothesis and second analysis of data
    • 10.1Are /ta33/ and /nə33/ evidentials?
    • 10.2What role do verbal semantics play in Thewo’s evidential system?
    • 10.3Is /nə33/ a mirative marker?
  • 11.Comparison of /ta33/ and /nə33/ with evidentials in other Tibetic varieties
  • 12.This journey’s end and other journeys’ beginning
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
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