Himalayan Linguistics

Denjongke is atypical within Tibetic languages in how speaker’s inner sensations such as hunger, cold, feeling of illness and emotions are expressed. Whereas most other Tibetic languages use a sensorial evidential form in default expressions of speaker’s inner sensations (Tournadre 2021, 2023 preprint), Denjongke uses a variety of other forms. The sensorial forms may also be used when the speaker takes an outsider's perspective on their inner sensations in contexts such as surprise and sudden discovery. The reason why Denjongke, unlike Common Tibetan and some other Tibetic languages, can use personal forms for expressing the speaker’s inner sensations is that Denjongke personal forms are not associated with volitionality, whereas the personal/egophoric forms of Common Tibetan and some other Tibetic languages are strongly associated with volitionality.