Tibetan to Turkish: two evidence systems do not share a suffix-by-suffix key
Start with the source of the claim, not a table of endings
Garfield and de Villiers distinguish Tibetan personal knowledge, direct evidence, and several indirect possibilities in the spoken system they analyze. Turkish also marks information source, but the relevant categories do not align as a set of identical compartments.
Tosun and Vaid discuss Turkish -di and -miş as part of a firsthand versus nonfirsthand contrast, while also examining their broader interpretations. A Tibetan evidential cannot therefore receive one Turkish suffix merely because both have been given the same brief English label. Determine how the speaker obtained the information before selecting the target construction.
A report and an inference can share the same Turkish form
Tosun and Vaid illustrate Handan okula gitmiş both for a reported departure and for an inferred departure, with the interpretation supplied by the situation. The Turkish verb alone does not necessarily preserve which of those knowledge sources was intended.
This matters when Tibetan distinguishes inference from general background information and inference from a specific perceptible clue, as in Garfield and de Villiers’s analysis. If that distinction drives the message, a Turkish -miş form may need additional wording about the evidence. Conversely, a Tibetan report learned from another person should not be recast as the speaker’s own deduction simply because the target suffix permits both readings.
The other past form is not a certificate of eyewitness observation
Tosun and Vaid also discuss -di in contexts where the speaker did not directly witness the event, including expected situations and news reporting. Their account therefore does not support treating every target -di as an absolute claim of visual access.
For Tibetan input, identify the source’s actual evidential meaning rather than impose a simplistic rule that witnessed events receive one ending and all other events another. A confident target past clause can express a different stance from a statement that explicitly attributes information to a report. The appropriate Turkish form depends on the whole proposition and speech situation.
Personal authority is broader than direct perception
Zeisler’s discussion of an idealized Standard Spoken Tibetan system connects personal epistemic authority with familiarity, involvement, or responsibility. This is not equivalent to having watched the event. A person can have privileged knowledge about their own activities or commitments without describing a visual observation.
The Turkish study likewise separates source interpretations from judgments of confidence, investigating how they interact rather than assuming that they are identical. Preserve the Tibetan distinction that matters: personal access, a specific observation, another person’s report, or reasoning from a clue. Then choose Turkish morphology and any necessary explanation together. Replacing every source ending mechanically risks retaining a grammatical past form while changing who supplied the information, how it was obtained, or how strongly the speaker presents it.
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