Evidentiality In A-rig Dialect Of A-mdo Tibetan

Evidentiality is a linguistic category whose primary meaning is source of information, without necessarily relating to the degree of speaker’s certainty concerning the statement or whether it is true of not. A-rig(?) dialect, which distributes in a-mdo(?) region traditionaly be classified to a-mdo pastoral dialect, and manifeste a complex evidential systerm, which maily embodied direct, inferred, quotative and reported, in which direct evidentiality defines that information is obtained through speaker’s senses, like sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch, etc., inference evidentiality is the inferences of source of information in accordance with some traces or the result of events, reported evidentiality defines that the information is from some unknown person and quotative evidentiality unveils the specific source of information, or we can infer the source of information through the context. Evidentiality, in A-rig dialect, is marked by auxiliary verbs and particles after finite verb, of the two possibilities, the former mainly include the direct evidential marker tha and inferential evidential marker zuik,and the latter concrete manifestation to have quotative evidential maker fizi and reported evidential maker se, still kw2which denotes direct evidentiality. kw2can not only be deemed as a direct evidential marker but also exhibited as a mirativity marker,which indicate sudden discovery, sudden revelation or realization by the speaker,or information new to the speaker. Evidentiality grammatically show quite a complex of systerm, which is closely related to tense and aspect, person, situation of verbs, mood, negation and interrogation etc. The main contents of this dissertation are as follows:Chapter1is the preliminary introduction to the geography, culture and language of A-rig tribe as well as the reason of choosing this topic, the research value of this study, theoretical framework, data collection, and the achievements and difficulties to the analysis. Literature review on the history of research on evidentiality in Tibetan is also presented, further more the phonology and morphosyntas of A-rig dialect also roughly be outlined. At the end of the chapter comes the content arrangements and writing instructions.Chapter2is an overview of evidentiality in Tibetan. With reference to typology, this chapter introduces the definition and types of evidentiality, its distribution in languages of the world, the origin and evolution of the evidentiality markers, its relationship with epistemic modality and mood, its relationship with self center, nirativity and the situation and meaning of verbs, tense and aspect, person, mood, interrogation and negation in particular.In Chapter3, a minute analysis is presented of the direct evidentiality marker tha and inferential evidentiality marker zwk. This chapter depicts the effects of tense and aspect, person, situation of verbs and morphosyntax etc on the distribution of the two markers. Then comes the preliminary analysis of the information coding process mediated by modern new media in A-rig dialect.Chapter4analyzes existential verb and the direct evidentiality and mirativity. Different from most of the modern tibetan dialects that by means of lexical suppletion of existential verb to convey the source of information, attaching particle kw2after the existential verb jo is more basically grammatical device to express source of information. Moreover, the particle kw2can also be suffixed to other verbs to convey direct evidentiality and mirativity. Especially kw2is paralleled to another paricle Ra to convey respectively no-egophoric and egophoric meanings, the former embodied in evidentiality and mirativity, and the other to show the controllability and certainty of the speaker of what he have narrated.Chapter5presents the morphosyntax of quotative evidentiality and reported evidentiality. In this chapter, from a synchronic point of view, we mainly describe the particle se and fizi that how they express the source of information.From what have been discussed above we can conclude that quotative evidentiality and reported evidentiality are still not completely grammatical marker and are undergoing an evolution.Chapter6discusses the copula. In this chapter I assume that the main function of copula in A-rig dialect is to indicate the subjective-objective perspective and certainty hierarchy of the speaker, so copula is not the typical morphemes to convey the source of information. However, to an extent this function would seem to be connected with the source of information and can be deemed as an evidential strategy to convey like-evidentiality. Chapter7discusses the path of the grammaticalization of the direct evidential marker tha. The process may be summed up as coming undergong five procedures: verb of motion> phase complement> semi-aspect> perfective aspect> direct evidential marker. I also hold that metaphor played an important role in this process.Conclusion and prospect comes in Chapter8. In this chapter, main viewpoints of this dissertation and the achievements are summarized and deficiencies are also recognized. I also point out means of further study on evidentiality in this part.