egophoricity

In linguistics, egophoricity refers to a grammatical category that marks one's personal involvement in an event.{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | p=2}} In languages with this category, an egophoric form is used for expressing information to which the self has "privileged access"{{sfn | Hargreaves | 2005 | p=31}} as opposed to an allophoric (or non-egophoric) form.{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | p=2}}{{sfn | Widmer | Zúñiga | 2017 | p=419}}

Egophoric forms are typically associated with first-person subject declarative sentences and second-person subject interrogative sentences (egophoric distribution).{{sfn | Rumsey | 2020}}

The concept of egophoricity was originally developed in descriptive studies on Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the Himalayas such as Newar and Tibetan; however, the category has also been found in languages of Northwestern China, the Andean region, Caucasus, New Guinea, and elsewhere.{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | pp=5-6}}

Terminology

"Ego-" refers to "self" and "-phor" means "to carry".{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | p=7}}

The term "egophoric" was coined by French linguist Nicolas Tournadre in his description of Lhasa Tibetan{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | p=7}}{{sfn | Tournadre | 1991}}{{sfn | Tournadre | 2017 | p=110}} although his former supervisor Claude Hagège had used "égophore" in a different sense prior to that.{{sfn | Tournadre | 2017 | p=110}}{{sfn | Hagège | 1982}}

Before "egophoricity" came into use in the literature, linguists often referred to the same phenomenon by the term conjunct and disjunct forms.{{sfn|DeLancey|1990|p=295}}{{sfn|DeLancey|2018|p=583}} The distinction between conjunct/disjunct was first made in Austin Hale's work on Kathmandu Newar.{{sfn | Hale | 1980}}{{sfn | Hill | Gawne | 2017 | pp=8-9}}

Overview

= The egophoric distribution =

Usually, the marking of egophoricity is correlated with grammatical person and sentence types: egophoric forms typically occur with the first-person subject in declarative sentences and the second-person subject in questions. By contrast, non-egophoric forms will appear in the other contexts. This pattern is called egophoric distribution.{{sfn | Rumsey | 2020}}{{sfn | Widmer | Zúñiga | 2017 | p=420}}{{sfn | San Roque | Floyd | Norcliffe | 2018 | pp=4-5}}

class="wikitable" \|+ Typical distribution of (non-)egophoric markers. ! ! Declarative ! Interrogative
1st person \| {{Smallcaps\|ego}} \|\| {{Smallcaps\|non-ego}}
2nd person \| {{Smallcaps\|non-ego}} \|\| {{Smallcaps\|ego}}
3rd person \| {{Smallcaps\|non-ego}}\|\| {{Smallcaps\|non-ego}}

class="wikitable"

|+ Typical distribution of (non-)egophoric markers.

! Declarative

! Interrogative

1st person

| {{Smallcaps|ego}} || {{Smallcaps|non-ego}}

2nd person

| {{Smallcaps|non-ego}} || {{Smallcaps|ego}}

3rd person

| {{Smallcaps|non-ego}}|| {{Smallcaps|non-ego}}

Unlike person agreement, however, the use of (non-)egophoric forms may not follow it under certain semantic or pragmatic situations.

=The case of Kathmandu Newar=

Kathmandu Newar, a Tibeto-Burman language spoken in the capital of Nepal, has two past tense makers for verbs: the egophoric {{lang|new|-ā}} and the non-egophoric {{lang|new|-a}}. The former is normally used in first-person declaratives and second-person questions whereas the latter is applied to the other sentences:{{sfn | Hale | 1980 | p=91}}{{sfn | Hargreaves | 2005 | p=12}}