Skip to main content
Article
Evidentials in Tibetan: Acquisition, Semantics and Cognitive Development
New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (2009)
  • Peggy Speas, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Abstract

We describe the nature of the evidential system in Tibetan and consider the challenges that any evidential system presents to language acquisition. We present data from Tibetan-speaking children that shed light on their understanding of the syntactic and semantic properties of evidentials, and their competence in the point-of-view shift required for the use of evidentials in questions. We then examine connections between the mastery of indirect evidentials and children's inferential competence.

Publication Date
2009
Citation Information
Peggy Speas. "Evidentials in Tibetan: Acquisition, Semantics and Cognitive Development" New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development (2009)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/peggy_speas/14/