Evidence and certainty in Lisu
This paper presents data on epistemic and evidential markers in three main varieties and several subvarieties of Lisu, a Tibeto-Burman language with over a million speakers in China, Burma, Thailand and India. It is shown that the original system had a number of epistemic markers and a reporte...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2024
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/10356/177712 |
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| Institution: | Nanyang Technological University |
| Language: | English |
| Summary: | This paper presents data on epistemic and evidential markers in three main varieties
and several subvarieties of Lisu, a Tibeto-Burman language with over a million
speakers in China, Burma, Thailand and India. It is shown that the original system
had a number of epistemic markers and a reported speech marker, along with
various imperative and question markers, all in clause-final position. These markers
have similar meanings in those varieties which have not undergone change. In some
varieties and subvarieties, evidential systems have developed separately over the
last couple of hundred years, grammaticalising some verbs and redeploying some
epistemics into evidentials. The corresponding systems in the most closely-related
languages show cognates for the reported speech marker, some epistemic markers
and some other final markers for imperatives and questions, and for the verbs which
grammaticalise into evidentials in Lisu. It is clear that the direction of change in
Lisu is from epistemic to evidential, and that these developments are relatively
recent and separate, for example from the development of the evidential system of
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