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Part of
Social Environment and Cognition in Language Development: Studies in honor of Ayhan Aksu-Koç
Edited by F. Nihan Ketrez, Aylin C. Küntay, Şeyda Özçalışkan and Aslı Özyürek
[Trends in Language Acquisition Research 21] 2017
► pp. 113–132

Chapter 8
Evidentiality, questions and the reflection principle in Tibetan

What do children learn when they learn about evidentiality?

| Smith College, U.S.A.
| Smith College, U.S.A.

Evidentials fall in the borderland between traditional semantics and pragmatics. A situation semantics for evidentials helps to explain their puzzling developmental pathway in children. Drawing on our work in Tibetan, we argue that there is no necessity for a child to master Theory of Mind, that is, awareness of others' mental states, in order to make or to understand assertions that carry evidential force. The meaning of evidentials does not make reference to states of knowledge of persons, but rather encodes relations between discourse, evidence and evaluation situations. On the other hand, when a Tibetan speaker asks a question, the form of the evidential used in the question must anticipate the kind of knowledge the interlocutor can access in reply. Full mastery of questions in Tibetan-speaking children does require attention to and representation of others' states of knowledge and belief.

Keywords: evidentials, Tibetan, questions, Theory of Mind, semantics
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Overview of the Tibetan evidential system
  • 3.Evidentiality and acquisition challenges
  • 4.Tibetan evidentials and maternal-child speech
  • 5.The semantics of evidentials
  • 6.The reflection principle for questions
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 18 July 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/tilar.21.08vil
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Cited by

Cited by 2 other publications

de Villiers, Jill
2021. With Language in Mind. Language Learning and Development 17:2 ► pp. 71 ff. DOI logo
de Villiers, Jill G.
2018. Chapter 10. Perspectives on truth. In Semantics in Language Acquisition [Trends in Language Acquisition Research, 24], ► pp. 222 ff. DOI logo

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