The pragmatic differences between grammatical and lexical evidentiality: A corpus-based study of Tibetan and English

Abstract

The paper examines to what extent expressing information sources with a fully grammaticalized evidential system or with lexical means may have a different pragmatic impact in conversation. A contrastive corpus of Tibetan (TSC) and English (CSC/LAC) allows me to investigate several dimensions: frequency, semantic schematicity, optionality, economy, and information hierarchy. The data from the contrastive corpus indicate that Tibetan evidentials are on average 6.7 times more frequent than English evidentials. Tibetan evidentials are also functionally more schematic, since English evidentials usually contain more semantic features. This compels English speakers to be more specific when referring to their information sources. Grammatical evidential systems may be less optional than lexical systems, but the degree of optionality differs depending on the linguistic level. The morpho-syntactic obligatoriness of many Tibetan evidentials may indeed be compensated by the availability of evidentially neutral forms in the same paradigm. However, evidentiality seems to be pragmatically less optional in Tibetan than in English. Tibetan evidentials are also more economical on a morpho-phonetic, syntactic, and cognitive level. Finally, all these parameters influence the informational status of evidentials. Because they are more frequent, schematic, obligatory, and economical, Tibetan evidentials appear more backgrounded.