Functional transition from hear to nonvisual sensory and hearsay evidential categories

Abstract

This article presents a development of evidential categories derived from a verb related to the auditory sense in the evidential system attested in rGyalthang Tibetan varieties. The language varieties under study possess a morphological distinction of at least five evidentials in the access-to-information category and two evidentials in the source-of-information category. The discussion focuses on one morpheme derived from the Literary Tibetan verb grag ‘resound, hear’ used for both categories, and examines its process of grammaticalisation and degrammaticalisation. Elicited data illustrate the following functions: (1) grag as a nonvisual sensory evidential suffix that was further degrammaticalised as a copulative nonvisual sensory verb stem; (2) grag as a hearsay marker in a separate syntactic slot, which extended from (1); and (3) grag as a lexical verb stem meaning ‘hear’ [the common origin to (1) and (2)], which underwent two grammaticalisation processes.