A Contrastive Approach to the Evidential System in Tibetic Languages: Examining Five Varieties from Khams and Amdo

Abstract

Tibetic languages constitute a language complex with a complicated evidential-epistemic marking system. Many studies have described evidentiality in various Tibetic languages; however, significant variations in terminology and framework make a contrastive approach to the evidential system of these languages difficult. In this article, we describe the ‘access-type’ evidential marking system of copulative and existential verbs in five Tibetic languages and make a morphological analysis by using a common questionnaire based on the evidential system of Lhasa Tibetan, the most-described variety of the Tibetic languages. Next, we discuss the dissimilarities between languages. In conclusion, we show that the copulative and existential verbs in the Tibetic languages of the Khams and Amdo regions discussed in this article share the essential system of evidential marking under the unified framework of the evidential category, although they demonstrate significant differences.