Lamjung Yolmo copulas in use: evidentiality, reported speech and questions

© Laura Gawne 2013. This thesis is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Lamjung Yolmo is an endangered dialect of the Tibeto-Burman Yolmo language, spoken in Nepal. In this thesis I focus on three grammatical features of Lamjung Yolmo: The encoding of modality on copula verbs, question structures and reported speech structures. I explore the grammatical structure of these features and focus on their function from the perspective of social cognition. Social cognition recognises that human language is deeply embedded in interaction, and that this interaction is situated within a larger interpersonal and cultural context. In chapter 5 I give an introduction to the theoretical perspectives on the grammatical constructions under investigation. Not only do all three of these features have a rich history of investigation in Tibeto-Burman languages, but together form the basis of conjunct/disjunct and egophoric analyses of a number of languages related to Lamjung Yolmo, which I also introduce in this chapter. In chapter 6 I look at the copula verb paradigm of Lamjung Yolmo. Like in other Tibetic languages, they encode a range of evidential and epistemic meanings in the copula verbs. In Lamjung Yolmo this includes ego, perceptual evidential, general fact and dubitative. These function not only as copulas but also as verb final auxiliaries. I look at the semantics of the ‘ego’ form, which is similar to the Standard Tibetan egophoric, but also has some major differences. I demonstrate that the variation in the use of copula verbs in Lamjung Yolmo is attributable to their semantics, but also to the way speakers wish to construct their knowledge states for their interlocutors in interaction, and cannot be reduced to the kinds of patterns described in the conjunct/disjunct literature. In chapter 8 I look at reported speech constructions in Lamjung Yolmo. There are two strategies for reporting speech in Lamjung Yolmo: a verb of saying, and a reported speech particle. For the verb of saying I observe that the kind of structures found in Lamjung Yolmo make a conjunct/disjunct approach to reported speech unnecessary. In regard to the reported speech particle I show that in interactional data it actually has a wider role than reporting speech events. In chapter 9 I draw together common threads of analysis. This includes trying to formalise the relationship between different evidential and epistemic forms in a hierarchy, and to evaluate the effect opacity of mind has on interaction in Lamjung Yolmo. I also return to the merit of a conjunct/disjunct analysis for Lamjung Yolmo. Instead of the current conjunct/disjunct or egophoric analyses I present a reduced analysis which focuses on two main features; the first is existence of an ‘ego’ or ‘self’ type modal and the second is questions structures that use the modal of the expected answer. This analysis allows for a better cross-linguistic comparison with other languages that have been described as conjunct/disjunct or egophoric. This thesis also gives a general description of Lamjung Yolmo (Appendix 1) and is based on original fieldwork