Books by Bettina Zeisler
2011 (Co-edited) Himalayan Languages and Linguistics. Studies in Phonology, Semantics, Morphology and Syntax. Brill.
Edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics gathers together ni... more Edited by Mark Turin and Bettina Zeisler
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics gathers together nine outstanding and original contributions on the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages of this important and culturally diverse mountainous area. Filling a marked gap in our understanding of the languages of this underdocumented region, the collection offers a snapshot of the state of the field of Himalayan language research and linguistic comparison. Drawing on primary fieldwork in China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as on comparative sources, the new analyses outlined in these contributions will interest a readership of linguists, philologists, anthropologists, historians, lexicographers and specialists in the languages and cultures of Inner and South Asia. Contributions cover topics as diverse as linguistic palaeontology, orthographical standardisation, dialectology, phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax.
2004 (eBook 2011) Relative tense and aspectual values in Tibetan languages. A comparative study. Mouton deGruyter.
This study presents a comparative approach to a universal theory of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD, combi... more This study presents a comparative approach to a universal theory of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD, combining the methods of comparative and historical linguistics, fieldwork, text linguistics, and philology. The parts of the book discuss and describe (i) the concepts of TENSE, ASPECT and MOOD; (ii) the Tibetan system of RELATIVE TENSE and aspectual values, with main sections on Old and Classical Tibetan, “Lhasa” Tibetan, and East Tibetan (Amdo and Kham); and (iii) West Tibetan (Ladakhi, Purik, Balti); Part (iv) presents the comparative view.
Discussing the similarities and differences of temporal and aspectual concepts, the study rejects the general claim that ASPECT is a linguistic universal. A new linguistic concept, FRAMING, is introduced in order to account for the aspect-like conceptualisations found in, e.g., English. The concept of RELATIVE TENSE or taxis, may likewise not be universal.
Among the Tibetan varieties, West Tibetan is unique in having fully grammaticalized the concept of ABSOLUTE TENSE. West Tibetan is compared diachronically with Old and Classical Tibetan (documented since the mid 8th century) and synchronically with several contemporary Tibetan varieties. The grammaticalized forms of each variety are described on the basis of their employment in discourse. The underlying general function of the Tibetan verbal system is thus shown to be that of RELATIVE TENSE. Secondary aspectual functions are described for restricted contexts. A special focus on the pragmatic or metaphorical use of present tense constructions in Tibetan leads to a typology of narrative conventions. The last part also offers some suggestions for the reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verb system.
Papers by Bettina Zeisler
2022 To be or not to be: On the Modern Tibetan auxiliary verb red in classical texts
Himalayan Linguistics 21.3, 2022
In contrast to other Modern Tibetan auxiliaries, the linguistic history of the so-called ‘factual... more 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 15th-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 thaṅ.yig is the result of an unfortunate misreading. On the other hand, some editions of the Gser.gyi phreṅ.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 18th-century text, which is not widely known.
Sino-Platonic Papers 331, 2023
At least four sound alternations apply in Tibetan and its predecessor(s): regressive metathesis, ... more At least four sound alternations apply in Tibetan and its predecessor(s): regressive metathesis, alternation between nasals and oral stops, jotization, and vowel alternations. All except the first are attested widely among the Tibeto-Burman languages, without there being sound laws in the strict sense. This is a threat for any reconstruction of the proto-language. The first sound alternation also shows that reconstructions based on the complex Tibetan syllable structure are misleading, as this complexity is of only a secondary nature. In combination, the four sound alternations may yield large word families. A particular case is the word family centering on the words for speaking and human beings. It will be argued that these words ultimately go back to a loan from Eastern Iranian.
2023 Beyond evidentiality, the case of Ladakhi inok & siblings
Himalayan Linguistics Archive, 13, 2023
The crosslinguistic concept of evidentiality, discriminating between direct and indirect knowledg... more 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 active involvement.
With the so-called ‘factual’ copula and auxiliary red (or equivalents), 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 ‘factual’ usages of red as a copula could possibly be translated by the compound
auxiliary inok of the Central Ladakhi dialects and its siblings’ ɦinak, ɦindak, ɦinɖak, and intsuk elsewhere. Nevertheless,
inok & siblings do not present events neutrally, but express a speaker’s distanced attitude towards the content and
the addressee and, logically, express the expected attitude of the addressee in questions. One important function of
inok & siblings is to shift the focus from the speaker and his or her knowledge to the addressee and the latter’s
knowledge or interest. The exact value of this attitude may vary considerably according to the context and sociopragmatic
constraints, some of the latter also being dialect specific. The various functions of Ladakhi inok & siblings
may shed light on the perhaps not so neutral character of red (and its equivalents) and, more generally, on how ‘evidential’
the ‘evidential’ systems in Tibetic languages (and languages under Tibetic influence) actually are.
2023 Evidential-perceptual transfer by a blind speaker? Or: what do the Ladakhi markers for “visual” and “non-visual” perceptual experience, ḥdug and rag, actually encode?
Journal of South Asian Languages and Linguistics, 2023
A typical trait of the modern Tibetic languages is that speakers obligatorily encode the knowledg... more A typical trait of the modern Tibetic languages is that speakers obligatorily encode the knowledge base for their statements: whether they have intimate and/or authoritative knowledge of a situation, whether they have merely perceived a situation, whether they have merely inferred (or presumed etc.) a situation, whether they have second-hand knowledge, or even whether their knowledge is shared with the addressee or the larger community. In most of the Tibetic languages, speakers do not differentiate between different perceptual channels. By contrast, in most of the Ladakhi dialects, speakers appear to differentiate between visual perception, using the auxiliary ḥdug (or snaṅ), and sense perception through other channels, using the auxiliary rag. This opposition needs to be reanalysed based on the observation of how a congenitally blind speaker deals with these two options and upon certain unexpected choices made by non-handicapped speakers.
New perspectives on modern Ladakh Fresh Discoveries and Continuing Conversations in the Indian Himalaya, 2021
This photo-essay deals in a poetical manner with the following question:
what has the word gama i... more This photo-essay deals in a poetical manner with the following question:
what has the word gama in the cryptic phrase Don’t be gama in the land of lama to do with Ladakh, apart from the fact that sign boards bearing this phrase appear frequently in Ladakh. In this connection, we will also feature the short story Ustād, 1951, by Intizar Husain (7. 12. 1923–2. 2. 2016), which of course, likewise has nothing to do with Ladakh. But it helps to understand what the idea behind the word gama is.
2021 Semantically related verb verb combinations in Tibetan and Ladakhi - 1300 years of stable transition.
In: Taro Kageyama, Peter E. Hook, and Prashant Pardeshi (eds.), Verb-verb complexes in Asian languages. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2021
Tibetic languages are, from the very beginning, very rich in verb verb combinations
that are not ... more Tibetic languages are, from the very beginning, very rich in verb verb combinations
that are not simply due to the omission of contextually given arguments. Some of these
combinations have gramaticalized into temporal-modal-evidential constructions, modal verb
constructions, and causative constructions. A forth type of combinations, that will be described
here as ‘semantically related verb verb combinations’, is rather problematic. Formally,
the first verb modifies the second verb, while semantically, one might argue that they form a
compound. I will show that particularly the most frequent combinations have to be analyzed
as bi-clausal modifying constructions, while other, less frequent constructions show a greater
degree of compositionality or even grammaticalization.
2020 Ambiguous verb sequences in Ladakhi (a Tibetic language spoken in Ladakh, India, formerly part of the state Jammu and Kashmir).
In: Éva Á. Csató, Lars Johanson, and Birsel Karakoç (eds), Ambiguous Verb Sequences in Transeurasian Languages and Beyond. (Turcologica, 120.) Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz., 2020
Himalayan languages and linguistics: Studies in phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax, 2011
Linguistic discovery, 2018
Non-equative comparisons are typically interpreted in terms of degree semantics. That is, the com... more Non-equative comparisons are typically interpreted in terms of degree semantics. That is, the comparee is
thought to have the same property as the standard, but to a different degree. In this paper I should like to
introduce a different way of conceptualising differences, namely categorical contrasting, where one focuses
more on the contrast than on the gradualness of the difference. Two items are described as being essentially
different with respect to a certain property, and this can imply that the standard against which an item is
contrasted lacks the property in question. In order to show that this approach is more suitable for the
Tibetic languages, especially the West Tibetan varieties spoken in Ladakh, I will not only discuss the
standard ways of expressing differences, but also some more marginal constructions at the limit of
acceptability.
2018 Evidence for the development of ‘evidentiality’ as a grammatical category in Tibetan.
2018 Don’t believe in a paradigm that you haven’t manipulated yourself! – Evidentiality, speaker attitude, and admirativity in Ladakhi (extended version).
2017 Don’t believe in a paradigm that you haven’t manipulated yourself! Evidentiality, speaker attitude, and admirativity in Ladakhi.
Review of Cognitive Linguistics; special issue, ed. by Agnès Celle and Anastasios Tsangalidis, The Linguistic Expression of Mirativity, 2017
A speaker may conceptualise a situation from three different modal ‘perspectives’: epistemic, evi... more A speaker may conceptualise a situation from three different modal ‘perspectives’: epistemic, evidential, and attitudinal. Languages differ in which of these concepts they perspectivise and how a grammaticalised concept may be extended to the other two. ‘Lesser-known’ languages tend to be misrepresented in the typological literature. E.g., the Modern Tibetic languages, including the Ladakhi dialects, are said to have grammaticalised the concept of evidentiality. However, their ‘evidential’ systems differ from the cross-linguistically acknowledged evidential systems, in that speaker attitude is co-grammaticalised and knowledge based on perception shares properties with knowledge based on inferences. DeLancey therefore claimed that these systems also encode mirativity. The starting point for the development of these typologically rather uncommon ‘evidential’ systems was a lexical marker for non-commitment (or admirativity): the auxiliary ḥdug.
2017 The emergence of the Ladakhi inferential and experiential markers from a marker for admirativity (non-commitment): the case of ḥdug and snaŋ
he Ladakhi inferential markers /-suk/ ~ /-sok/ and /-tok/ ~ /-tuk/ can
be shown to be related to ... more he Ladakhi inferential markers /-suk/ ~ /-sok/ and /-tok/ ~ /-tuk/ can
be shown to be related to the Old and Classical Tibetan verb ḥdug, originally a
lexical verb with the meaning ‘stay, live, sit’. The development of ḥdug into
auxiliaries for the opposite evidential values of external direct knowledge (or
immediate sense perception) and of indirect knowledge (or inferences) in various
modern Tibetic dialects has a parallel in the development of the Classical
Tibetan verb snaŋ, originally ‘shine, appear’ into auxiliaries for both direct and
indirect knowledge in some Balti and Ladakhi varieties. This parallel development
indicates that the dominant factor underlying the choice of the auxiliaries
is not a question of sources of knowledge and access channels (evidentiality) but
a speaker’s attitude of commitment or non-commitment (admirativity)
2016 las.stsogs etc. – On internal cues for dating Old Tibetan documents
ZAS, 2016
One of the most interesting Old Tibetan documents of Dunhuang is the document Pt 1287, the so-ca... more One of the most interesting Old Tibetan documents of Dunhuang is the document Pt 1287, the so-called Old Tibetan Chronicle, a reader’s digest of the historical highlights of the Tibetan Empire. The document is an inhomogeneous patchwork, showing also traces of, in the literal sense, cut-and-paste revisions, and quite a few misconstrued sentences. To a careful reader it becomes evident that it is only a personal draft, although most probably aimed at an official propaganda version. A headache for the translator, it is a treasure for any historian interested in past processes of history construction. One of the many riddles the text poses is the time and the purpose of its compilation. The Tibetan Empire broke down in 841 or 842. While the power struggle continued for some time, most of the dominions in Eastern Turkestan were lost by 851 and the rest by 866 at the latest. The Library Cave is generally believed to have been sealed in 1036 or even in 1006. It is somewhat difficult to imagine that about 180 to 200 years after the breakdown of the Tibetan Empire and the loss of Tibetan control in Eastern Turkestan anybody in Dunhuang would have been interested in compiling a history of, or a historical narrative about, the Tibetan Empire. But this is exactly what Christopher Beckwith and Michael Walter are arguing for, claiming that the document was not only a post-Imperial compilation (that is, compiled at any time after 842), but a very late compilation dating to the beginning of the 11th century or even later, and that its language was not really Old Tibetan, but ‘almost’ Classical Tibetan (to be dated perhaps from the 11th century onwards). In their latest publication on this topic, Beckwith and Walter (2015) for the first time present some linguistic arguments for this rather astonishing assumption.
2016 Context! Or how to read thoughts in a foreign language
tüBingen -ལ་ཏ་ཡུལ་ལམ་སླེ ་ (lata yul/ leh) From times immemorial, stars and stellar constellation... more tüBingen -ལ་ཏ་ཡུལ་ལམ་སླེ ་ (lata yul/ leh) From times immemorial, stars and stellar constellations have helped human travellers to navigate the endless seas and the endless deserts and steppes. Twenty-seven (or twenty-eight) of the constellations, so-called lunar mansions, Sanskrit नक्षत्र, Tibetan རྒྱུ་སྐར་, further help the moon (and the sun) to navigate the sky. In many cultures, stellar constellations, be it the lunar mansions or the constellations of the zodiac, have also been accepted as a means to navigate through one's personal life. Many constellations, therefore, have been associated with auspicious, if not even healing properties, or also the opposite. The 17th lunar mansion अनु राधा is called 'causing welfare, happiness', the 24th शतभिषा, 'requaring a hundred physicians'. Accordingly, Tibetan astrology is in part concerned with illnesses and their sources: ནད་རྱི ས་ 'calculating the illness(es)'.
2015 Eat and drink – if you can! A language internal explanation for the ‘irregular’ paradigm of Tibetan za, zos, zo ‘eat’. Himalayan Linguistics 14.1:34–62.
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Books by Bettina Zeisler
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics gathers together nine outstanding and original contributions on the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages of this important and culturally diverse mountainous area. Filling a marked gap in our understanding of the languages of this underdocumented region, the collection offers a snapshot of the state of the field of Himalayan language research and linguistic comparison. Drawing on primary fieldwork in China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as on comparative sources, the new analyses outlined in these contributions will interest a readership of linguists, philologists, anthropologists, historians, lexicographers and specialists in the languages and cultures of Inner and South Asia. Contributions cover topics as diverse as linguistic palaeontology, orthographical standardisation, dialectology, phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax.
Discussing the similarities and differences of temporal and aspectual concepts, the study rejects the general claim that ASPECT is a linguistic universal. A new linguistic concept, FRAMING, is introduced in order to account for the aspect-like conceptualisations found in, e.g., English. The concept of RELATIVE TENSE or taxis, may likewise not be universal.
Among the Tibetan varieties, West Tibetan is unique in having fully grammaticalized the concept of ABSOLUTE TENSE. West Tibetan is compared diachronically with Old and Classical Tibetan (documented since the mid 8th century) and synchronically with several contemporary Tibetan varieties. The grammaticalized forms of each variety are described on the basis of their employment in discourse. The underlying general function of the Tibetan verbal system is thus shown to be that of RELATIVE TENSE. Secondary aspectual functions are described for restricted contexts. A special focus on the pragmatic or metaphorical use of present tense constructions in Tibetan leads to a typology of narrative conventions. The last part also offers some suggestions for the reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verb system.
Papers by Bettina Zeisler
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 active involvement.
With the so-called ‘factual’ copula and auxiliary red (or equivalents), 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 ‘factual’ usages of red as a copula could possibly be translated by the compound
auxiliary inok of the Central Ladakhi dialects and its siblings’ ɦinak, ɦindak, ɦinɖak, and intsuk elsewhere. Nevertheless,
inok & siblings do not present events neutrally, but express a speaker’s distanced attitude towards the content and
the addressee and, logically, express the expected attitude of the addressee in questions. One important function of
inok & siblings is to shift the focus from the speaker and his or her knowledge to the addressee and the latter’s
knowledge or interest. The exact value of this attitude may vary considerably according to the context and sociopragmatic
constraints, some of the latter also being dialect specific. The various functions of Ladakhi inok & siblings
may shed light on the perhaps not so neutral character of red (and its equivalents) and, more generally, on how ‘evidential’
the ‘evidential’ systems in Tibetic languages (and languages under Tibetic influence) actually are.
what has the word gama in the cryptic phrase Don’t be gama in the land of lama to do with Ladakh, apart from the fact that sign boards bearing this phrase appear frequently in Ladakh. In this connection, we will also feature the short story Ustād, 1951, by Intizar Husain (7. 12. 1923–2. 2. 2016), which of course, likewise has nothing to do with Ladakh. But it helps to understand what the idea behind the word gama is.
that are not simply due to the omission of contextually given arguments. Some of these
combinations have gramaticalized into temporal-modal-evidential constructions, modal verb
constructions, and causative constructions. A forth type of combinations, that will be described
here as ‘semantically related verb verb combinations’, is rather problematic. Formally,
the first verb modifies the second verb, while semantically, one might argue that they form a
compound. I will show that particularly the most frequent combinations have to be analyzed
as bi-clausal modifying constructions, while other, less frequent constructions show a greater
degree of compositionality or even grammaticalization.
thought to have the same property as the standard, but to a different degree. In this paper I should like to
introduce a different way of conceptualising differences, namely categorical contrasting, where one focuses
more on the contrast than on the gradualness of the difference. Two items are described as being essentially
different with respect to a certain property, and this can imply that the standard against which an item is
contrasted lacks the property in question. In order to show that this approach is more suitable for the
Tibetic languages, especially the West Tibetan varieties spoken in Ladakh, I will not only discuss the
standard ways of expressing differences, but also some more marginal constructions at the limit of
acceptability.
be shown to be related to the Old and Classical Tibetan verb ḥdug, originally a
lexical verb with the meaning ‘stay, live, sit’. The development of ḥdug into
auxiliaries for the opposite evidential values of external direct knowledge (or
immediate sense perception) and of indirect knowledge (or inferences) in various
modern Tibetic dialects has a parallel in the development of the Classical
Tibetan verb snaŋ, originally ‘shine, appear’ into auxiliaries for both direct and
indirect knowledge in some Balti and Ladakhi varieties. This parallel development
indicates that the dominant factor underlying the choice of the auxiliaries
is not a question of sources of knowledge and access channels (evidentiality) but
a speaker’s attitude of commitment or non-commitment (admirativity)
Himalayan Languages and Linguistics gathers together nine outstanding and original contributions on the Tibeto-Burman and Indo-Aryan languages of this important and culturally diverse mountainous area. Filling a marked gap in our understanding of the languages of this underdocumented region, the collection offers a snapshot of the state of the field of Himalayan language research and linguistic comparison. Drawing on primary fieldwork in China, India, Nepal and Pakistan, as well as on comparative sources, the new analyses outlined in these contributions will interest a readership of linguists, philologists, anthropologists, historians, lexicographers and specialists in the languages and cultures of Inner and South Asia. Contributions cover topics as diverse as linguistic palaeontology, orthographical standardisation, dialectology, phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax.
Discussing the similarities and differences of temporal and aspectual concepts, the study rejects the general claim that ASPECT is a linguistic universal. A new linguistic concept, FRAMING, is introduced in order to account for the aspect-like conceptualisations found in, e.g., English. The concept of RELATIVE TENSE or taxis, may likewise not be universal.
Among the Tibetan varieties, West Tibetan is unique in having fully grammaticalized the concept of ABSOLUTE TENSE. West Tibetan is compared diachronically with Old and Classical Tibetan (documented since the mid 8th century) and synchronically with several contemporary Tibetan varieties. The grammaticalized forms of each variety are described on the basis of their employment in discourse. The underlying general function of the Tibetan verbal system is thus shown to be that of RELATIVE TENSE. Secondary aspectual functions are described for restricted contexts. A special focus on the pragmatic or metaphorical use of present tense constructions in Tibetan leads to a typology of narrative conventions. The last part also offers some suggestions for the reconstruction of the Proto-Tibetan verb system.
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 active involvement.
With the so-called ‘factual’ copula and auxiliary red (or equivalents), 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 ‘factual’ usages of red as a copula could possibly be translated by the compound
auxiliary inok of the Central Ladakhi dialects and its siblings’ ɦinak, ɦindak, ɦinɖak, and intsuk elsewhere. Nevertheless,
inok & siblings do not present events neutrally, but express a speaker’s distanced attitude towards the content and
the addressee and, logically, express the expected attitude of the addressee in questions. One important function of
inok & siblings is to shift the focus from the speaker and his or her knowledge to the addressee and the latter’s
knowledge or interest. The exact value of this attitude may vary considerably according to the context and sociopragmatic
constraints, some of the latter also being dialect specific. The various functions of Ladakhi inok & siblings
may shed light on the perhaps not so neutral character of red (and its equivalents) and, more generally, on how ‘evidential’
the ‘evidential’ systems in Tibetic languages (and languages under Tibetic influence) actually are.
what has the word gama in the cryptic phrase Don’t be gama in the land of lama to do with Ladakh, apart from the fact that sign boards bearing this phrase appear frequently in Ladakh. In this connection, we will also feature the short story Ustād, 1951, by Intizar Husain (7. 12. 1923–2. 2. 2016), which of course, likewise has nothing to do with Ladakh. But it helps to understand what the idea behind the word gama is.
that are not simply due to the omission of contextually given arguments. Some of these
combinations have gramaticalized into temporal-modal-evidential constructions, modal verb
constructions, and causative constructions. A forth type of combinations, that will be described
here as ‘semantically related verb verb combinations’, is rather problematic. Formally,
the first verb modifies the second verb, while semantically, one might argue that they form a
compound. I will show that particularly the most frequent combinations have to be analyzed
as bi-clausal modifying constructions, while other, less frequent constructions show a greater
degree of compositionality or even grammaticalization.
thought to have the same property as the standard, but to a different degree. In this paper I should like to
introduce a different way of conceptualising differences, namely categorical contrasting, where one focuses
more on the contrast than on the gradualness of the difference. Two items are described as being essentially
different with respect to a certain property, and this can imply that the standard against which an item is
contrasted lacks the property in question. In order to show that this approach is more suitable for the
Tibetic languages, especially the West Tibetan varieties spoken in Ladakh, I will not only discuss the
standard ways of expressing differences, but also some more marginal constructions at the limit of
acceptability.
be shown to be related to the Old and Classical Tibetan verb ḥdug, originally a
lexical verb with the meaning ‘stay, live, sit’. The development of ḥdug into
auxiliaries for the opposite evidential values of external direct knowledge (or
immediate sense perception) and of indirect knowledge (or inferences) in various
modern Tibetic dialects has a parallel in the development of the Classical
Tibetan verb snaŋ, originally ‘shine, appear’ into auxiliaries for both direct and
indirect knowledge in some Balti and Ladakhi varieties. This parallel development
indicates that the dominant factor underlying the choice of the auxiliaries
is not a question of sources of knowledge and access channels (evidentiality) but
a speaker’s attitude of commitment or non-commitment (admirativity)
Colloquium of the International Association for Ladakh Studies.
Supplemento N° 2 alla Rivista Degli Studi Orientali, Nuova Serie, Volume LXXX. Pisa, Roma: Fabrizio Serra Editore. Introduction (John Bray and Elena de Rossi Filibeck). 283pp, 2 maps, 45 illustrations. ISBN 978-88-6227-188-2, ISSN 0392-4866
(paperback, 245€).
Ladakh is famous among trekkers for her mountains and among other tourists also for her association with Tibetan Buddhism. Most visitors, however, neglect that half or more of the population follow a different religion, and hardly anybody comes to Ladakh specifically for her mosques. While the title of the volume under review is somewhat misleading – none of the articles deals specifically with ...
'Evidentiality’ in Tibetic languages and beyond – a closer look –
16.-17. February 2019
Schloß Hohentübingen
'Evidentiality’ in Tibetic languages and beyond – a closer look –
16.-17. February 2019
Schloß Hohentübingen
This questionnaire has been developed primarily for the Tibetic languages, and is, in its initial stage, biased towards the Ladakhi dialects. In order to make it more universally applicable to Tibetic-type systems I should greatly welcome input from researchers around the world. The questionnaire will present the contexts in which the standard and non-standard usages of the ‘evidential’ and evaluative auxiliaries and morphemes in question show up.