Chapter 3

Mirativity and egophoricity in Kurtöp

The terms ‘mirative’ and ‘egophoric’ have often been employed to describe various epistemic contrasts which, on the surface, appear to be quite similar. Kurtöp, a Tibeto-Burman language of Northeastern Bhutan, contrasts both mirativity and egophoricity, providing evidence that they are two separate categories. Mirativity in Kurtöp is a pervasive feature of the grammar; it occurs in imperfective and perfective aspect, in addition to being encoded in affirmative and negative forms of existential and equational copulas. In statements, the mirative is used to encode that knowledge was new or unexpected to the speaker while non-mirative forms encode old knowledge. In questions, only non-mirative forms are used. In contrast to mirative marking, egophoricity is marked in perfective aspect only. An egophoric form encodes that the speaker has intimate knowledge of an event or intention of an event; a non-egophoric form does not encode this personal knowledge. Unusually, egophoric marking in Kurtöp includes a distinction as to whether knowledge is exclusive to the speaker, or is thought to be shared. Mirative and egophoric forms have particular tendencies to co-occur with certain subjects, especially in elicitation. However, when we look within natural discourse, these categories are complex, with subtler meanings than basic elicitation would suggest.