Still Mirative After All These Years PDF
Still Mirative After All These Years PDF
Still Mirative After All These Years PDF
SCOTT DELANCEY
Abstract
This article re-presents the case, first presented in DeLancey (1997), for the
mirative as a crosslinguistic category, and responds to critiques of that work by
Gilbert Lazard and Nathan Hill. The nature of the mirative, a category which
marks a statement as representing information which is new or unexpected,
is exemplified with data from Kham (Tibeto-Burman) and Hare (Athabaskan).
The mirative category is shown to be distinct from the well-known mediative
or indirective evidential category. Finally, the role of mirativity in the complex
verbal systems of Tibetan languages is briefly outlined.
Keywords: evidential, Hare, indirective, inferential, inflection, information
structure, Kham, mediative, mirative, syntax, Tibetan
1. Backdrop
I cannot claim authorship of the term mirative. Neither can I claim to have
been the first to propose it as a crosslinguistic category; I believe that credit
goes to Akatsuka (1985). Fifteen years ago, in the first issue of this journal,
I was the first to link the term to the semantic category, and pointed out its
prevalence as a grammatical category. Over the intervening decade and a half,
a considerable body of research has described constructions of this kind in lan-
guages from Finno-Ugrian (Leinonen 2000) to Tsimshianic (Peterson 2010),
from the Himalayas (D. Watters 2002) to Amazonia (Queixalos 2007), and on
around the world (Dixon 2003, LaPolla 2003, Bashir 2010, Kwon 2010, forth-
coming, inter alia). The category has been recognized in general work on evi-
dentiality (Aikhenvald 2004) and in morphosyntactic surveys of various kinds
(Heine & Kuteva 2002, Creissels 2006, Melcuk 1994, Chelliah & de Reuse
2011). Whatever the theoretical status of mirativity, it is clear that a great many
linguists have found the category as I described it useful in the description and
analysis of a range of languages from around the world.
Over the same time there have been less enthusiastic reactions, express-
ing doubts about whether such a new category was necessary either on the
grounds that my formulation was not sufficiently precise to be convincing, or
that the category I described was simply a different perspective on some other
phenomenon that was already familiar. Indeed the formulation presented in
DeLancey (1997) was vague and noncommittal on some points, and inconsis-
tent (if not incoherent) in at least one crucial respect, and my subsequent article
(DeLancey 2001) did not resolve all of these issues. Thus a response to this
line of criticism, and particularly to the very reasonable concerns expressed by
Gilbert Lazard, is long overdue.
Now in this issue of Linguistic Typology we also have a rather more ambi-
tious, if less cautious, critique from Nathan Hill which argues that everything
that I have said on the subject is simply wrong (Hill 2012b). While Lazard and
others have questioned the place of mirativity in an overall scheme of verbal
categories, Hill argues that there is no such thing in the first place. Frankly,
as far as I can see most of Hills critique has so little substantive content as to
hardly be worth replying to. Nevertheless I am happy to take this opportunity to
restate the case for the mirative in (I hope) somewhat clearer and more explicit
terms.
In Section 2 I will restate the argument for mirativity as a crosslinguistic
category; in the course of this exposition I will address Hills criticisms of sub-
stance. Section 3 will address the status of mirative as a distinct category, espe-
cially with respect to the mediative; here I will also deal with the plausibility of
Hills counterproposal. Section 4 will provide a very brief discussion of the rel-
evance of mirativity to the analysis of the complex Tibetan egophoric/evidential
systems.
years later (1981) of what was published as their 1986 article that I began to
think in terms other than simple evidentiality. The foundation of my concept
of mirativity was laid the following summer when I encountered my first pure
mirative while doing fieldwork on Hare.
Hills critique of the concept of mirativity can be summarized as: (i)
DeLanceys proposal that mirative be recognized as a crosslinguistic category
is fundamentally based on his analysis of a particular morpheme, Tibetan dug,
(ii) he completely misunderstood the nature of dug, which expresses direct
sensory evidence, not mirativity, (iii) therefore everything else that he has
ever said about mirativity or evidentiality is wrong, (iv) and therefore every
other author who has identified a mirative construction in a language which
they study is also wrong. (Since these authors, then, must have failed to prop-
erly understand their own data, Hill goes on to explain what is really going on
in these languages.) Hills entire case against the mirative as a crosslinguistic
category rests on point (i), which is simply asserted, rather than argued for,
and thus literally irrefutable. But it could hardly be argued for. The case for
the mirative category in DeLancey (1997) is based on three two-term systems,
Turkish, Hare (DeLancey 1990b), and Sunwar (DeLancey 1992a); Lhasa Ti-
betan and Korean are presented as examples of more complex systems where
mirativity can be recognized as a component, not as primary evidence for the
category. Later in this article we will see that the emphasis on two-term sys-
tems in that article is at the root of the confusion of mediative and mirative
systems in my proposal. In Section 3 I will try and resolve this confusion, as
Lazard and others have demanded.
myself here to correcting Hills omissions and outright falsehoods about the
work of David Watters, and going over some of my own examples which Hill
has misunderstood or missed altogether.1
1. But, since Hill takes it upon himself not only to take Tatevosov & Maisak (1999) to task for
having the temerity to actually use the term admirative in a title, but also to correct their
interpretation of their own data, let me especially recommend to the reader Tatevosov (2007)
and Maisak & Tatevosov (2007), where the authors have more space to present their analyses,
for their clear and explicit evidence and argument. (No one reading Tatevosovs paper will be
able to take seriously the idea that he is simply uncritically swallowing my proposals, as Hill
implies.)
As Akatsuka notes, What the speaker connotes in using this type of antecedent
is not I know S1 , but rather I didnt know S1 until now!. I have not collected
natural examples of this in English, but my intuitive sense is that it most easily
occurs in response to new information obtained from someone else:
(2) a. [Coming in from outdoors:] The rains stopped, its beautiful out!
Lets go work in the garden!
b. Oh, if its not raining, Im gonna go for a run.
c. Since its not raining, Im gonna go for a run.
Of course, (2b) would be perfectly possible without the context of (2a), but
then it would express the speakers lack of knowledge about the current state
of the weather. In the context of (2a), it is consistent only with a reading in
which the speaker believes that it is not raining, and has only just learned that.
Contrast it with (2c), which has no mirative force and can be used whether the
proposition is old or new information.
Mirativity, then, is a robust and familiar phenomenon. The question for ty-
pologists is, to what extent do we find this semantic category expressed in
languages by dedicated grammatical constructions? As we have already noted,
mirativity (whether or not by that name) shows up in many grammatical de-
scriptions, such as Bashir (2010: 3):
In Kalasha and Khowar, the forms called inferential in Bashir (1988) report non-
witnessed events or actions learned of by hearsay, inference from observation of
resultant states, or narrated in traditional tales; however, these forms also encode
meanings which are uniquely mirative.
This point is illustrated by (3), a Khowar sentence which [Bashir has] had ad-
dressed to [her] as a foreigner not expected to know Khowar, on a first meeting
with someone (Bashir 2010: 3).
But Hill is ready to tell us that Bashir is wrong about Kalasha, just as everyone
else who has described a mirative construction is wrong about their data. In
the next two sections I will go over some examples where I am in a position to
demonstrate just who is wrong about what.
It can also be used with statements based on inference, as in (6), which precedes
(5) in the same text, said when the speaker first discovered traces showing that
the leopard had eaten his dog:
Note that it is not the case that oleo here expresses the inferential category
per se. It is clear from the discourse context that the statement was based on
inference from secondary evidence; the contribution of the mirative here is
to express the speakers attitude (at the moment being described) toward the
information.
2.4.1. Could oleo mark direct evidence? Hill asserts that the oleo construc-
tion cannot be considered a mirative because Watters does not present exam-
ples inexplicable in terms of sensory evidence. He discusses example (5), but
not (6), but I take it from his treatment of other data that he would still consider
this sensory evidence, because, after all, the speaker did see something. But
in a true evidential language, these two statements, in the context in which they
were made, could not be in the same grammatical form. Since the speaker is
a direct witness to the proposition he states in (5), and is explicitly not in (6),
(5) would be in the unmarked or the direct evidential form, and (6) marked as
inferential. (As we will see in Section 4, this is the case in Tibetan.)
In any case, Watters presents many examples inexplicable in terms of sen-
sory evidence. The second and third sentences from the text from which (56)
are taken are (Watters 2002: 418):
The mirative oleo at the end of (7) tells us that the loss of the dog was an
unanticipated event, not that there was or wasnt some kind of evidence for
it. The actual evidence is simply the absence of evidence of dogs, as stated in
the next sentence: what sparked the realization of the mirative-marked event
is the failure of the dogs to appear for breakfast not direct perception of
anything, but, precisely, the absence of anything to perceive. (In any case, even
if one wanted to insist that (8) is a report of a dogless situation known by direct
evidence, note that it is not that sentence which is marked as mirative, but the
previous one, describing an event which the speaker at the time had no actual
knowledge of at all, direct or otherwise.)
2.4.2. The language of dreams. Hill makes much of the use of mirative
constructions in reporting dreams, and seems to consider it evidence that a
construction is mirative (even though there is no such thing), to the point of
including it in his checklist of typical features of mirative constructions (or,
maybe, what would be typical features if mirative constructions existed). On
his checklist he lists Kham with a question mark in the Dreams column, but
Watters does explicitly discuss the use of the mirative in relating a dream. He
presents (9) from the narration of a dream in which the speaker, Jaman Sing,
is captured by a group of women and stuffed into a burlap bag. Later, he makes
a startling discovery:
Jaman Sings words/thoughts, though reported to no-one at the time, are marked
by the mirative. He conveys to his audience now, perhaps weeks after the event,
that his discovery of his captors identity was new, unassimilated knowledge at the
time.
In context (see Watters 2002: 428) this realization does not appear to be the
result of direct perception, even within the dream, but of suddenly realizing the
significance of the previous course of events. Another example from the same
text is even clearer. After the narrator wakes from his dream, he realizes its
meaning:
Hill seems to feel entitled to explicitly doubt a direct statement about a lan-
guage by someone who actually knows something about it (Watters was in fact
a fluent speaker of Kham). It is hard not to read this as a direct assertion that
Watters is wrong about, if not actually misrepresenting, his data. The first and
last clauses of Hills sentence are true; the middle one is an outright falsehood.
It seems extraordinarily careless even for such an enthusiast to have simply
missed the section on Third person narratives (D. Watters 2002: 295296,
also referred to by Aikhenvald), where Watters explains that, while usually
in 3rd person narratives which the narrator is not reporting as an eyewitness,
events are marked with the reported speech particle (RSP) di (D. Watters 2002:
295, emphasis added):
An exception to RSP marking in third person narratives occurs with recent events.
interestingly the report of such events is marked with the mirative
oleo. This occurrence accords with Aksu-Ko and Slobins account of a similar
phenomenon in Turkish there, over time, as the once-new information becomes
a part of general world knowledge the mirative is dropped.
He then presents a 13-line text illustrating the point, where the speaker is relat-
ing events which had happened to someone else, and ends each sentence with
the mirative oleo. So, not only does the language use the mirative construction
to mark a statement as based on hearsay, it does so in a very systematic way,
which is described and carefully exemplified in the very grammar which Hill
insists provides no such examples.
3. Nowhere in his article does Hill address explicit statements from native speakers cited by me
and other authors about how they understand the forms and examples in question.
that John is gone is visual evidence for (12), but this reduces the notion of direct
evidence to vacuity. Seeing that someone is not present is visual evidence that
he is not present; it is not visual evidence of where he is instead. But it is
unnecessary to debate the point; the first context my consultant gave me, the
one which seemed the most obvious and natural to him, is the one where the
only way I know where John went is that someone who knew the information
told me.
Since Hill wants to insist that l, like all putative miratives, really expresses
direct sensory evidence, it is vital to his argument that it not be usable in a
context where the speakers only evidence for the proposition is hearsay. In
DeLancey (1997) I was concerned with exemplifying the mirative force of the
form, but its use in hearsay contexts is described elsewhere. Consider (13):
Of which the author states that it could be used if I was not aware that John
was gone, or knew he was gone but didnt know where, but I see him returning
with a load of meat, or if he told me after his return where he had
been (DeLancey 1990b: 154, emphasis added).
I suppose Hill may still want to say that I am just wrong about this, but the
fact is, this sentence, and many others with l, can indeed be used in a con-
text where the information was obtained from someone else, with no sensory
perception on the part of the speaker except hearing the words of his source of
information.
In DeLancey (1997, 2001) I portrayed inference and hearsay as functions
of the mirative construction, which was obviously problematic. I was taken by
the parallels between the Hare construction and the Turkish mediative, as de-
scribed by Aksu-Ko & Slobin, and ended up, as Lazard (1999) was quick to
note, defining the mirative as something very much like the classic mediative.4
Assuming my argument (DeLancey 2001, Aikhenvald 2004) that mirativity is
distinct from evidentiality, to say that the mirative codes either indirect evi-
dence or unanticipated information is contradictory. The correct significance
of the fact that mirative constructions can occur in both direct and indirect evi-
dential contexts is precisely that it proves that they are not evidentials direct
vs. indirect evidence is the fundamental evidential distinction, so a construc-
tion which simply ignores that distinction is not an evidential. The essential
4. I use mediative to refer to the category of indirect evidence which subsumes both inference
and hearsay; this category, also referred to as indirective, has been the subject of an exten-
sive literature (e.g., Lazard 1996, 1999, 2000; Johanson 2000, 2003).
2.6.1. Non-literal mirativity. Hill expresses some skepticism about the use
of mirative forms to convey compliments. Of the Hare sentence (14), I state
explicitly: Something like this might be said to someone who has just demon-
strated more wilderness knowledge than the speaker thought he had
(DeLancey 1997: 40, emphasis added).
Hill engages in some speculation about when people might say this, but un-
necessarily it should not be that hard to conclude from my description that
the sentence would not be so polite in a context where the speaker ought to
have known already, and indeed it would not. I cant exactly perform Hills
experiment, nor do I claim to be an expert in Dene etiquette, but I can say for
certain that this sentence would be very complimentary coming from an older,
experienced man to a younger person, and bizarre, if not downright insulting,
in the other direction. As I have suggested above, Hill misses the point in spec-
ulating whether l would be grammatical in the context where the speaker is
commenting to a world-renowned musician on his skill. Of course it would be
grammatical, in some narrow sense, but it would be socially quite inappro-
priate.
Maslova (2003) provides an excellent example of the mirative use of the
inferential in Yukaghir which nicely illustrates the point. See (15):
(15) a. qalite o:-lel-dek
best.hunter cop-infer-intr.2sg
You proved to be a real hunter!
b. qalite o:-dek
best.hunter cop-intr.2sg
Youre a real hunter!
Maslova (2003: 228229) discusses this example:
It seems that a morphological distinction is drawn between properties that are
displayed and/or acknowledged by the speaker for the first time (Inferential) and
properties that have been established earlier and are therefore known to be present
(Direct). For example, in a narrative about the speakers very first hunting expe-
rience, whereby he was supervised by his elder brother, the brother makes two
encouraging statements, first [(15a)] (right after the hunting was over) and then
[(15b)]. [. . . ] The Inferential marking in [(15a)] indicates that the elder brother
has inferred, on the basis of the boys behavior, that he has a set of qualities re-
quired of qalite (the best hunter of a tribe). By the time of the second utterance,
this fact has already been established, and the Direct form is appropriate.
Another Hare example which should help lay to rest the idea of a sensory
evidential interpretation of l is (16):
(16) gsh yedarehyie l
really be.smart.1sg.su.impf mir
Im really smart! (DeLancey 1990b)
This is something you would say when you have surprised yourself with how
well and quickly you accomplished a formidable task. It doesnt matter if the
task is one that results in sensory evidence, the point is simply that you didnt
think you could do it, or at least not do it so skillfully, but found that you could.
294), where the mirative marks a proposition in a narrative which was not
known to the narrator at that time. Here the mirative serves to mark the in-
formation as new to the speaker now, from the perspective of the speaker as a
participant in the narrative who was at the time unaware of it. For example, in
a narrative recounting a visit from his attorney when he was in jail, a speaker
says:
After the time of the visit, described in this sentence, the speaker learned of
the meeting between Adikhari Sahib, his attorney, and Old Man Sergeant. But
at the time of the visit, he (the speaker) was not aware of this prior meeting.
The use of the mirative here conveys that the information he had met with
Old Man Sergeant, when he eventually learned of it, was new information,
unknown to him at this point in the narrative. There can be no question of
sensory evidence involved in any way in the use of the mirative construction
here. (The same phenomenon is described for Western Apache by de Reuse
(2003: 83).)
the substantial discussion of these questions, and more importantly, the flood of
literature on evidential and mirative systems of the last fifteen years has done a
great deal to clarify the issues.
Since Hill effectively adduces no empirical support for his argument, it
should hardly be necessary to refute it further. But there is an obvious theo-
retical refutation, the reason why Hills proposal is not only false in fact but
impossible in principle, which will serve as the basis for my explanation for
the similarities between mediative/indirective and two-term mirative systems.
no evidential value at all. Hill is asserting that languages such as Kham, Hare,
Sunwar, and Khowar are exactly that. But what would determine when such a
construction would be used? There is no such thing as a direct evidential that
does not contrast with one or more indirect evidentials:
[L]anguages tend to grammaticalize indirect evidentials before they grammatical-
ize direct evidentials. Languages in general develop grammaticalized quotatives
and inferentials before evidentials that mark direct, sensory, evidence. Although
there are minor exceptions to this generalization, it appears to be fairly robust
crosslinguistically, based on the data reported in de Haan (2005). The explanation
for this grammaticalization pattern is related to markedness: when someone is
speaking it will normally be assumed the speaker has first hand evidentiary infor-
mation, unless explicitly stated otherwise. Thus, indirect evidentiality is marked
with respect to direct evidentiality and according to markedness theory will have
to be marked overtly. (de Haan 2008: 6970)
We will see further implications of this when we get to the discussion of Ti-
betan in Section 4.
I have shown above that as a matter of empirical fact the Kham and Hare
mirative categories do express mirativity, not direct evidence. What we have
seen in this section is that, since in both cases the construction in question is
the marked member of a type A2 two-term system, there is no possible way
that their meaning could be direct evidence. In Section 4 we will apply this
argument to the problem of Tibetan evidentiality. In the next two parts of this
section we will look at the relationship between mirative oppositions like this
and the mediative.
separation of mirative and evidential values, due to the legitimate semantic differ-
ences between both, cannot explain why these values are regularly expressed by
means of one and the same marker.
a much stronger claim about the status of information [than DeLanceys mira-
tive] [. . . ] comprising not merely the relative novelty of immediate perceptions
meeting an unprepared mind, but also, independent of the means of knowledge,
the speakers devaluation of the information as unbelievable. The speaker thus
keeps distance to second-hand information as well as to his or her own observa-
tions and signals that, in contrast to normal observations, s/he would not be willing
to act as a witness under oath.
This is quite different from the mirative in Hare or Kham, which does not
devalue the information, but presents it as fact, often as important fact.
Still, in our current state of knowledge, it is certainly not inconceivable that
the differences in the descriptions of mediative and mirative systems are some-
how artifactual, reflecting different presumptions or methodological choices on
the part of linguists. For example, Donabdian (2001: 432), trying to reconcile
both categorial profiles under a single definition, suggests that the strong as-
sociation in the literature between the mediative category and the particular
values of hearsay and inference may be an artifact of the elicitation process.
A speaker asked to evaluate an example sentence without context must, con-
sciously or otherwise, imagine a context, and the indirect contexts are the
simplest and thus the easiest to imagine. Other values require a more elabo-
rate scenario and are therefore less likely to occur when native speakers reflect
on their language out of context.
This contrasts directly with distinct inferential and hearsay forms (Grunow-
Hrsta 2007: 186; note that the non-mirative forms have a different nominal-
izer):
4. Tibetan
4.1. Evidential and other categories in the Tibetic verb
The Tibetic languages have attracted a great deal of attention for their com-
plex and unique evidential/egophoric systems.5 Grammaticalized mirativity is
widely attested across the geographical and genetic range of Tibeto-Burman
(D. Watters 2002, LaPolla 2003, Grunow-Hrsta 2007, Shirai 2007, Willis
2007, Lidz 2007, Noonan 2008, Andvik 2010, Hyslop 2011a, b), although there
are also languages (e.g., Burmese) and branches (e.g., Bodo-Garo) where we
find no evidential or mirative marking at all, and no case has been made for
either as a deeply-rooted characteristic of the family. But in the Tibetic lan-
guages, and a few of their near neighbors, we find evidential and mirative el-
ements combining with aspect, person, and volitionality in very unusual and
complex systems of evidentiality that are without direct analogues in other ar-
eas (Plungian 2010: 1920).
I cannot attempt a complete explanation of the Tibetan verbal system (for
an introduction and overview see Zeisler 2004). There has been a great deal of
5. There is abundant cultural and linguistic evidence for extensive and early contact between
Tibetan and Altaic speakers (Roerich 1930, Eberhard 1942, Beckwith 2009), so it is conceiv-
able that Himalayan evidentiality originates in mediative constructions ultimately borrowed
from Turkic, the apparent epicenter of the Great Evidential Belt (Johanson 2003). (See now
Binnick 2012 for evidence of both mediative and mirative constructions in Mongol.)
6. All Written and Central Tibetan examples are presented in a transliteration of standard orthog-
raphy. This is essentially the Wylie (1959) system with the addition of hyphens and equals
signs to represent two phonologically different types of morpheme boundary. (Transliteration
seems to be another topic on which Hill has energetic opinions; see Hill 2012a.)
Hill seems to miss the point of these examples; undoubtedly my earlier discus-
sion of them could have been more precise. In the real world (22b) and (22c)
are fairly unlikely sentences since anyone who knows what a yak is knows
that they are associated with Tibet, the ordinary way for anyone to state that fact
would be with the generic form (22a), which expresses knowledge for which
no evidential source needs be given, as because it is common knowledge.
If the speaker has such warrant for a statement, that is all that is necessary,
and the generic is the appropriate form. The use of either the personal or the
direct form implies that the statement is not being presented as generic knowl-
edge. So (22b) explicitly emphasizes the personal basis for the statement, that
the speaker is making the statement on the basis of personal knowledge rather
than common knowledge. The spirit is better captured in English by some-
thing like In my country, Tibet, we have yaks. The point of this example is
not, as many readers reasonably inferred from my earlier description, that this
is what any Tibetan would be expected to say, but rather that it is something
that only a Tibetan could ever say.
But the main point of these data for the problem of mirativity, which Hill ig-
nores, is stated quite plainly: that no Tibetan could ever say (22c). This means,
quite simply, that however useful direct evidence may be as a description of
this category, it is not the case that what is being expressed here is simply that
the speaker has direct perceptual evidence for the statement. If that were the
case, anyone who has seen a yak in Tibet which would include a great many
Tibetans could, and, one would expect, normally would, use this construc-
tion to report this fact. The reason this is impossible is because any Tibetan
has better basis than that for the statement. If one considers a fact to be generic
knowledge, then that is the strongest basis one can have for the statement, and
one will report the fact using that form. Failing that, personal knowledge is
the next strongest warrant. The essential fact about the direct or immediate
form is that it can be used only when neither of the stronger bases is avail-
able:
The use of this what may be termed the immediate evidential indicates that the
speakers basis for his assertion comes solely from perceptible evidence directly
present in the immediate speech-act situation. what is crucial here is that
the speaker implicitly denies having any information regarding the sit-
uation prior to the current perceptual experience; in other words, this
knowledge is entirely novel for the speaker. (Sun 1993: 996997, empha-
sis added)
(Sun is discussing an Eastern Tibetic language which does not use dug in
evidential forms, but this is the same pan-Tibetic category which Hill calls
direct.) It is for this reason that I adopt Suns term immediate rather than
direct for this category the meaning of the category is not that the speaker
has direct evidence, but that immediate direct evidence is the sole basis for the
statement.
The choice of the auxiliaries red, h.dug, and LT son indicates that the knowledge
of the speaker is based solely or predominantly on his or her immediate or new
visual experience, uncontaminated by knowledge of different sources. (Zeisler
2004: 300, emphasis added)
7. Resemblant, but not provably cognate, forms with similar existential/locative and aspectual
functions occur in several nearby languages, including Newar in Nepal, the Tani languages in
Arunachal Pradesh, and the Bodo-Garo languages of the Brahmaputra Valley. This local areal
phenomenon presumably originated in Tibetan.
4.3.2. Mirativity and the immediate evidential. The argument which Hill
seems to be trying to articulate is made succinctly and coherently by Zeisler
(2004: 301304), who points out that if the Tibetan immediate evidential were
a true mirative, it should be usable in inferential as well as direct evidential
contexts, as long as the information related is new. This is, of course, correct,
and is true of typical mirative constructions such as those of Kham, Kalasha,
and Hare. Zeisler, like Hill, finds the notion of mirativity otiose for the descrip-
tion of Tibetan. But unlike him, she recognizes that this is because the direct
For Zeisler, the defining semantic feature of the Tibetan category is uncon-
taminated immediate perception, i.e., information known through direct per-
ception but no other source. That is, Tibetic immediate evidential forms based
on dug do not simply express that the speakers basis for the statement is direct
evidence. Rather, they call explicit attention to that fact, in order to express that
that direct evidence is the sole basis which the speaker has for the statement.
The same point is made (but not sufficiently developed) in DeLancey (2001),
that eyewitness knowledge does not forbid the use of the personal or generic
forms, but that, as Zeisler notes, the direct construction indicates that the
speaker has only direct perceptual evidence, and had no knowledge of the fact
prior to perceiving it. The strictly limited use of the immediate evidential form
compared to miratives such as those of Kham or Hare is an inevitable conse-
quence of its position in a paradigm where it contrasts with other epistemic
categories, the personal and generic. As pointed out above, a language will not
have a construction which is used always and only for statements based on
direct perception, unless that construction contrasts with one or more construc-
tions which express other evidential categories. Typically we find a type A1
two-term contrast between direct and indirect evidence, as in Chechen, but the
Tibetic languages show us the more complex, and quite strange, three-term sys-
tem which we have briefly surveyed. The sense of direct sensory knowledge,
rather than the commoner sense of definite first-hand knowledge (de Haan
1999, 2001), arises through contrast with the generic and egophoric forms. So
the very specific sense associated with dug in most of the constructions in
which it occurs in Tibetic languages is very much an effect of the paradigm of
which it is part. Needless to say, one cannot simply wander off into the wilder-
ness of linguistic variety expecting to find close matches with such a form in
languages which lack the rest of the paradigm. But this is precisely what Hill
has done, and the results are what one would expect.
Still Zeisler and Hill are correct in pointing out that despite its strong mi-
rative connotations, the immediate evidence category in Tibetic languages is,
strictly speaking, an evidential category, and thus by definition not a pure mira-
tive. Note that the immediate category contrasts with the personal and inferen-
tial categories; it cannot co-occur with evidential forms as we see in Chechen
and Magar. In the next subsection I will speculate on the historical connection
between the immediate evidential and mirativity sensu strictu. In Section 4.4
we will see that, in addition to the immediate evidential category, some Tibetic
languages also have a true mirative.
4.3.3. On the origin of Tibetic egophoric systems. As we can see even from
this very sketchy glimpse, the simple concept of mirativity is not a magi-
cal key to the amazing verbal systems of modern Tibetic languages, whose
conjunct/disjunct or egophoric systems are very different from what we
are used to in the world of evidentials. Tibetic, and probably specifically
Central Tibetic, seems to be the center from which egophoric systems have
spread around the Himalayas. In the Tibetan cultural area, true egophoricity
has spread to a few non-Tibetic languages, including not only Bodic but non-
Tibetic Dakpa (DeLancey 1992b: 4648, where the language is called Cuona
Monpa), Bodish but non-Bodic Newar (Hargreaves 2005) and Kaike (D. Wat-
ters 2006), Tibeto-Burman but non-Bodish Akha (Egerod & Hansson 1974,
Thurgood 1986) and Sangkong (see DeLancey 2010: 45), and Tibetospheric
but non-Tibeto-Burman Mongguor (Mongolic; Chinggeltai 1989, Slater 2003)
and Xibe (Tungusic; L 1984, Jang et. al. 2011).
Curnow (2001), and now Hill, criticize my description of Tibetic conjunct-
disjunct systems as grammaticalized mirativity, and that may not have been
the most illuminating description. A better way of putting it is that the pe-
culiarities of the Tibetan system are a result of the expansion of a simple
two-term mirative system into a larger and more complex (more grammat-
ical) system in which each term is constrained to a relatively narrow se-
mantic space. It is clear that, historically, the conjunct or egophoric forms,
which express the category which I have been calling personal, are origi-
nal, and that the conjunct-disjunct/egophoric-allophoric/personal-direct system
arose through the innovation of the constructions which now express the direct
evidential category (Takeuchi 1990, DeLancey 1992b, Denwood 1999). This
is why, pace Curnow, the disjunct/allophoric forms are still formally marked,
and the conjunct/egophoric forms are unmarked. For Curnow this seems to be
a matter of intuition, but the formal evidence is that the contrast is neutralized
before subordinating constructions, where only the conjunct forms can appear
(Chang & Chang 1984, DeLancey 1990a). The member of an opposition which
consistently occurs in conditions of neutralization is the unmarked member by
definition.
The evidential/egophoric systems of the modern Tibetic languages are not
cognate; although often we may see cognate morphemes occurring in dif-
ferent systems, they have developed semi-independently in the different lan-
guages, and do not always correspond even in morphological structure (Sun
1993, Bielmeier 2000). There is only the most tentative indication of evidential
marking in Classical Tibetan (Takeuchi 1990, Denwood 1999: 246), and none
at all of an egophoric/allophoric distinction or of the relevance of volitional-
ity (Denwood 1999: 249). In early vernacular writing we see the beginnings
of constructions which have evolved into the Central Tibetic and other verbal
systems (Saxena 1997, Zeisler 2004). Thus the elaborate egophoric systems
of the modern languages are a recent development (Takeuchi 1990, DeLancey
1992, Tournadre 1996, Saxena 1997, Hongladarom 2007). Although they are
similar in the set of semantic categories expressed, they differ considerably
in the constructions and specific morphological material through which they
are expressed. In Central (dBus-gTsang or -tsang) Tibetan, the development
of the system involved the innovation of new locational/existential and equa-
tional copulas to contrast with original yod and yin. This seems to have begun
with the initial grammaticalization of dug, originally sit, stay, into a loca-
tional/existential copula contrasting with yod. The spread of this contrast to the
equational system is much later, so that even the very closely related Lhasa and
Shigatse dialects of Central Tibetan have different innovative forms Lhasa
red corresponds to Shigatse sbas.8
I suggest that the original innovative category represented by the first gram-
maticalization of dug was mirative, on the grounds that a two-term system
will most likely be either unmarked-mirative or direct-indirect, and such sys-
tems typically originate from the innovation of a mirative or indirect category.
Note that where we find two-way oppositions in neighboring languages, such
as Kham, Sunwar, and Qiang, it tends to be the familiar mirative. Since dug is
the innovative form, and nothing in its subsequent history suggests any asso-
ciation with indirectivity, the most likely inference is that it began as a simple
mirative. As we have seen, its semantic range has become more constrained as
the evidential paradigm in which it participates has become more complex and
precise, but it still retains a strong mirative sense, recognized by most authori-
ties on the subject. Eventually (apparently over not more than a few centuries)
the distinction came to be adopted into the verbal system through finitization
of nominalized clause constructions (DeLancey 2011).
Conjunct/disjunct or egophoric systems are not confined to the Tibetospheric
world. Outside of the Tibetan area, conjunct/disjunct-like phenomena have
been reported from the Andes (Dickinson 2000, Curnow 2002, Bruil 2009),
and more recently from the Caucasus (Bickel 2008; Creissels 2008a, b) and
Papua New Guinea (Loughnane 2009). Similarities and differences among all
of these systems have yet to be explored; the suggestions above are solely con-
cerned with the origins of the system in Central Tibetan.
8. I take this spelling from Jn (1958); Haller (2000b) gives bad. The form is /pie/.
5. Mirative forever
We have seen that even the original case for the mirative can easily weather an
attack such as Hills. I hope that in this article I have buttressed the original
case sufficiently to meet Lazards and Plungians challenges. In any case, it is
a fact, as even Hill acknowledges, that the concept has proved very useful to
descriptive linguists, and has contributed to insightful descriptions and analyses
of a wide range of languages around the world. The case for the mirative no
longer rests simply on my argumentation or examples, but on a broad base of
data and analysis. To refute the case one would need to demonstrate how these
languages can be better and more insightfully described in some other terms.
(This is what Hill pretends to do, but we have seen the results of that.)
Recent research opens up new vistas in the study of mirativity. There are
many empirical questions concerning the interaction of mirativity with person
(Hein 2001, 2007), with volitionality, with politeness, and many other factors.
Several authors have recently reported 2nd person miratives (Enfield 2007;
Bickel 2008; Molochieva 2010; Hyslop 2011a, b). It is clear, and widely ac-
knowledged, that Tibetic systems involve the interaction of mirativity and evi-
dentiality with person, see, e.g., Bickel (2008: 2):
What differentiates Tibetan epistemic morphology from standard average mira-
tives can best be captured by different responses to two key variables: (i) whose
knowledge is at issue? (ii) what is the knowledge about? I refer to the first variable
as the PERSON variable, and to the second variable as the SCOPE variable.
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