Evidential-perceptual transfer by a blind speaker? Or: what do the Ladakhi markers for “visual” and “non-visual” perceptual experience,ḥdugandrag, actually encode?

Abstract

AbstractA typical trait of the modern Tibetic languages is that speakers obligatorily encode the knowledge base for their statements: whether they have intimate and/or authoritative knowledge of a situation, whether they have merely perceived a situation, whether they have merely inferred (or presumed etc.) a situation, whether they have second-hand knowledge, or even whether their knowledge is shared with the addressee or the larger community. In most of the Tibetic languages, speakers do not differentiate between different perceptual channels. By contrast, in most of the Ladakhi dialects, speakers appear to differentiate between visual perception, using the auxiliaryḥdug(orsnaṅ), and sense perception through other channels, using the auxiliaryrag. This opposition needs to be reanalysed based on the observation of how a congenitally blind speaker deals with these two options and upon certain unexpected choices made by non-handicapped speakers.