Finnish to Tibetan: an inferred event and a likely event express different kinds of knowledge
A Finnish perfect can support an inference from present evidence
The University of Turku teaching material illustrates Viime yönä on satanut lunta as a conclusion about last night’s snowfall, supported by seeing white ground. The event is earlier than the observation, and the speaker draws an inference. A Tibetan translation should preserve that relationship rather than imply that the speaker watched the snow fall.
The same Finnish lesson distinguishes this inferential perfect from other perfect uses, including experience and an earlier situation continuing into the present. A perfect form is therefore not an instruction to choose one Tibetan evidential category every time. The event and the speaker’s grounds for presenting it must be read together.
This distinction is useful in an account of weather conditions. White ground in the morning and watching snow fall overnight can support related statements about the same event, but they are different kinds of access. A translation should not silently turn the inference into a witnessed report merely because both accounts concern past snow.
Tibetan sensory access is broader than seeing
Tournadre and LaPolla’s primary study illustrates Standard Tibetan mi ’dug for somebody being present. They explain that the sensory access can be auditory or tactile as well as visual. Thus selecting this type of construction need not claim that the speaker literally saw the person.
The study separately illustrates nga mgo na-gi.’dug for the speaker having a headache. Here the relevant access is an internal sensation. The same sensory category can therefore occur in a first-person experience without describing an externally visible event. Its interpretation depends on what is experienced and who experiences it.
These documented examples are not translations of the Finnish snow sentence. They show why a target category cannot be equated with a single English label such as seen or certain. The translation needs the actual access represented in the source account, including whether the information is inferred or internally experienced.
Likelihood does not identify the source of information
The Finnish mood documentation illustrates talo valmistunee for a house likely being completed. The potential form marks uncertainty or likelihood. It does not by itself say whether the speaker inspected the building, heard a report or reasoned from other evidence.
For Finnish into Tibetan, that leaves two questions to resolve rather than one: how strongly the source commits to the event, and how the speaker represents access to it. A target expression about evidence should not make a tentative source claim certain. A source expression of likelihood should not automatically become a hearsay report.
Keep the Finnish event time, degree of commitment and grounds for the statement separate. Then a suitable Tibetan construction can preserve the source’s perspective without converting morning evidence into overnight witnessing or treating an internal sensation as an observation available to everyone. The cited Tibetan analysis concerns Standard Tibetan, not a uniform system assumed for every Tibetic variety.
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