Book Review

A speaker may conceptualise and represent a situation from three different ‘perspectives’: epistemic, evidential, and attitudinal. Languages differ in which of these con­cepts they profile and how a grammaticalised category may be extended to the other two. The grammatical systems of lesser-known languages tend to be misrepresented in the typological literature. Modern Tibetic languages including the Ladakhi dialects are said to have grammaticalised evidentiality. However, their ‘evidential’ systems differ from the typologically more common systems, in that speaker attitude is co-grammaticalised and knowledge based on perception shares properties with knowledge based on inferences. The starting point for the development of this, as it seems, typologically rather uncommon ‘evidential system’ was a lexical marker for non-commitment (or admirativity): the auxiliary ḥdug.

The crosslinguistic concept of evidentiality, discriminating between direct and indirect knowledge, does not account for the Tibetic system, where the domain of direct is split up between external direct knowledge, based on immediate sense perception, and internal direct knowledge, based on acquaintance, control/ volition, responsibility, and/ or authority or engagement.   With the so-called ‘factual’ auxiliary red, several Tibetic languages also differentiate assertions, which are said to be neutral with respect to evidentiality. Ladakhi does not seem to have a corresponding counterpart. However, many instances of red can be directly translated by the compound auxiliary inok of the Central Ladakhi dialects and its siblings ɦinak, ɦindak, ɦinɖak, and intsuk elsewhere. The opposite, however, is not true. inok & Cie. do not present events neutrally, but express a speaker’s attitude towards the content and the addressee and, logivally, express the expected attitude of the addressee in questions. This attitude may vary considerably according to the context and socio-pragmatic contstraints. The Ladakhi auxiliaries inok & Cie. may thus shed light on the perhaps not so neutral character of the auxiliary red and, more generally, on how ‘evidential’ the ‘evidential’ systems in Tibetic languages and those influenced by them actually are.

Book Review

In contrast to other Modern Tibetan auxiliaries, the linguistic history of the so-called ‘factual’ marker red cannot be traced. Two scholars have independently pointed to the occurrence of red in the 15^th-century Mi.la.ras.paḥi rnam.thar. In all likelihood, this occurrence is the result of an editorial intervention. However, this text reveals an interesting distribution of five different verba dicendi, ingeniously used by the author of the text, to help understanding who talks to whom. Another suggested occurrence of red in the Padma thaŋ.yig is the result of an unfortunate misreading. On the other hand, some editions of the Gser.gyi phreŋ.ba do contain a single instance of red as a copula, which cannot be further analysed. The problematic status or red in all these texts demonstrates that in the reconstruction of the linguistic history of a language, the philological method cannot be set aside. Scribal errors or editorial interventions as well as unfortunate misreadings can only be detected when different editions are compared. In the appendix, I shall comment on the so far earliest use of ‘factual’ red in an 18^th-century text, which is not widely known.

The evidential or egophoric systems of various modern Tibetic languages are described as containing a ‘factual’ copula and a complex ‘factual’ existential, in opposition to the egophoric copula yin and the egophoric existential linking verb yod, e.g., Central and East Tibetan red and yod.red. Other descriptive terms are ‘assertive’ or ‘statemental’. These two markers are also described as being ‘neutral’, falling thus outside the ‘evidential’ system. In my opinion, the terms ‘actual’ and ‘neutral’ are not very well defined. They are used as cover terms for various functions, such as referring to generic facts and shared or shareable knowledge, as indicating inferences and assumptions, even as describing mere hypothetical situations, as expressing or highlightening the speaker’s non-involvement, or for other socio-pragmatic strategies. The terminological choice poses quite some problems, both with respect to the crosslinguistic use of ‘factual’ in the sense of realis mood (as opposed to various irrealis moods) and with respect to the position of the respective marker inside or outside the Tibetic evidential or egophoric system. Part of the problem may be connected also with the current understanding of the Tibetic evidential or egophoric systems.