Applying popular arguments for and against an independent egophoric grammatical category to Thewo Tibetan

Abstract Thewo Tibetan’s egophoric markers are restricted to volitional acts the speaker has done, is doing, and will do. This is unique amongst the reported Tibetan speech varieties given that usually first, second, and third person speech act participants (SAPs) can all use egophoric markers assuming they appear in the right communicative situation. As such, Thewo Tibetan provides a unique dataset to explore the relationship between egophoricity and evidentiality. To explore this relationship, I chose six influential scholars who have been active in discussing the question of whether egophoricity constitutes an independent grammatical category. Aikhenvald ( 2004 ; 2015 ; 2018 ; 2021 ) and DeLancey (2018) argue that because of different semantic functions and distribution, egophoric markers and evidential markers each belong to their own independent grammatical category. Tournadre & LaPolla (2014) and Gawne & Hill (2017) argue that given shared semantic motivations and a simpler analysis, egophorics and evidentials should belong to the same category. Next, I describe Thewo Tibetan’s evidential and egophoric markers. Thewo Tibetan is also unique in having a large inventory of egophoric markers which includes three types of past markers, two present markers, and two future markers. I apply the arguments for and against an independent egophoric category to Thewo Tibetan. Given ( 1 ) common semantic motivations underlying both the evidential and egophoric systems, and ( 2 ), the simplicity of an evidential analysis of the egophoric markers, I find it best to analyze Thewo Tibetan’s egophoric markers as part of the evidential system.