Table Of ContentUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles
Evidentiality and Assertion in Tibetan
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in Linguistics
by
Edward John Garrett
2001
© Copyright by
Edward John Garrett
2001
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
1.1. Situating the study 2
1.2. Evidentiality 4
1.3. Assertion 9
1.4. A brief introduction to Tibetan 11
1.4.1. Constructions 11
1.4.2. Concepts 16
1.4.2.1. Privileged access 16
1.4.2.2. Volitionality 17
1.4.2.3. Observability 19
1.5. Previous work 20
Chapter 2: Indirect Evidentiality 22
2.1. Performative epistemic modality 23
2.1.1. Performatives 23
2.1.2. Epistemic modality 26
2.1.3. Performative epistemic modality 29
2.2. Indirect evidentiality 36
2.2.1. Indirect in Tibetan 36
2.2.1.1. Hearsay 39
2.2.1.2. Inference 40
2.2.1.3. Impersonalization 41
2.2.1.4. Counterfactual apodoses 44
2.2.2. Indirect evidentiality as epistemic modality 46
2.2.3. Empirical payoff 49
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Chapter 3: Direct Evidentiality 52
3.1. The topic 54
3.2. The proposal 56
3.3. Locatability 63
3.3.1. Gaps: what can’t be located? 65
3.3.1.1. No direct in future 65
3.3.1.2. No direct copula 66
3.3.2. What can be located? 71
3.3.2.1. ELPA 72
3.3.2.2. Imperfective 76
3.4. Observability 77
3.5. Specificity and genericity 82
3.6. Epistemic uses of direct 89
3.7. Syntactic restrictions 93
3.8. Direct in Repkong Amdo 95
Chapter 4: Ego Evidentiality 102
4.1. Arguments for the default view 105
4.1.1. Embedded clauses 106
4.1.2. Construction-specific variation 107
4.1.3. Reduced constructions 109
4.1.3.1. Reduced questions 109
4.1.3.2. Reduced negatives 111
4.1.3.3. Non-inflecting aspectual verbs 113
4.2. Immediate knowledge 116
4.2.1. Self-knowledge and attitudes de se 117
4.2.2. De se names 130
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4.2.2.1. Names and ego in Tibetan 135
4.2.3. Performatives as ego 141
4.2.3.1. Explicit performatives 144
4.2.3.2. Truth by say-so 146
4.2.3.3. Truth by say-so and evidentiality 150
4.2.3.4. Japanese 152
4.2.4. Ego as default evidentiality 154
4.2.4.1. Saying and knowing 155
4.2.4.2. The evidential hierarchy and inference 157
4.2.4.3. The immediacy of self-knowledge 159
4.3. A survey of ego constructions 162
4.3.1. Volitionality 163
4.3.2. VP-level ego: byung 168
4.3.3. Genericity 174
4.4. Strong and weak evidential restrictions 178
4.4.1. The various strengths of ego 181
4.4.1.1. Weak ego 181
4.4.1.2. Strong ego 190
4.4.2. Weak ego, first-person, and weakest ego 193
4.4.3. Towards an explanation of strong and weak ego 196
4.4.3.1. Weak ego and aspect 197
4.4.3.2. Evidentiality and generics 201
4.5. Summary 206
Chapter 5: Embedded Assertions 207
5.1. Embedded evidentials and embedded assertions 208
5.2. Evidentials and logophors 217
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Chapter 6: Questions 225
6.1. The origo shift in questions 227
6.2. Self-questions 231
6.2. Posing without asking 233
6.4. Answer-sets as assertion sets 237
Chapter 7: Conditionals 242
7.1. Hypothetical and interactional conditionals 243
7.2. Future protases in English 246
7.3. Person asymmetries in Tibetan conditionals 252
7.3.1. Future protases in Tibetan: V-gi-yin-na 255
7.3.2. Direct protases: ‘dug-na 263
7.3.2.1. Direct in matrix declaratives 264
7.3.2.2. Direct in conditional protases 266
7.4. An alternative (and unsatisfactory) account 277
References 281
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Writing a dissertation was more difficult than I expected it to be, and
without the hard work, guidance, and encouragement of my doctoral
committee, this would not be worth reading. I want to extend special thanks
to Carson Schütze, for paying close attention to every stage of my research,
and for pushing me to do better; to Dominique Sportiche, for helping me to
see the big picture, and for finding value in things I found unextraordinary; to
Tim Stowell, for his unfailing encouragement and interest; to Barry Schein,
for fruitful discussion and commentary as a late addition to my committee;
and to Joseph Almog, for enthusiasm and inspiration as my outside member. I
am also grateful to Anna Szabolcsi for being a perfect mentor and advisor to
me during my first few years at UCLA. Others who played a key role in
shaping the ideas in this dissertation include Asif Agha, Misha Becker,
Martina Faller, Philippe Schlenker, and Nicholas Tournadre.
The Tibetans who shared the intricacies of their language with me
deserve special thanks. In the beginning, I had the privilege of being taught
by two excellent teachers, Tseten and Thinley. Later, I learned a great deal
from my consultants, including Kunchok and Yangchen in Los Angeles;
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Jigme, Ngawang, Tsering, and Tashi Dolma in Kathmandu; and Dawa and
Wangmo in Tibet.
I owe considerable thanks to the faculty and staff of the linguistics
department for making it a fun and exciting place to spend six years of my
life. I also want to thank the graduate division for awarding me a Chancellor's
Fellowship and a Dissertation Fellowship, the linguistics department for
consistent financial support, and Yvonne and the late Harry Lenart for the
Lenart Fellowship that enabled me to do field work in Nepal in 1998-1999.
Equally important if not more, I thank the friends I made during my
graduate days—without them I would have been much more boring and
efficient. Last and most, I thank my wife Beverley, without whose love I
would not be the happy and fulfilled man I have become.
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VITA
December 31, 1971 Born, Rockville Centre, New York
1994 B.A., Linguistics
Brown University
Providence, Rhode Island
1996-2000 Teaching Assistant
University of California, Los Angeles
1996-2000 Research Assistant
University of California, Los Angeles
2000-2001 Faculty Research Assistant
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
PRESENTATIONS
Garrett, Edward (1996). On the asymmetry of wh-in-situ interpretation. Paper
presented at Generative Linguistics of the Old World (GLOW),
Athens, Greece.
— (1997). Evidential constraints on tense in Lhasa Tibetan. Paper presented at
the 30th International Conference on Sino-Tibetan Languages
and Linguistics (ICSTLL), Beijing, China.
— (1999). The syntax of (covert) evidentiality. Paper presented at the meeting
of the Linguistics Association of Great Britain (LAGB),
University of York, UK.
— (2000). Minimal words aren’t minimal feet. Paper presented at the
Deutschen Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfs),
Marburg, Germany.
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ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Evidentiality and Assertion in Tibetan
by
Edward John Garrett
Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics
University of California, Los Angeles, 2001
Professor Carson Schütze, Co-chair
Professor Dominique Sportiche, Co-chair
This dissertation examines the three major evidential categories in Standard
Tibetan—ego, direct, and indirect. Indirect is argued to be a performative
epistemic modal; its performativity accounts for its highly restricted
distribution. Direct is argued to be complex, consisting of a demonstrative
component, which requires that the marked situation be stage-level, and a
pragmatic component, which requires that the marked situation have been
observed. Evidence from conditionals and from the Amdo variety of Tibetan
show that these two components can be disentangled from each other. Ego is
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