A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

the sentence level within the discourse cluster mii dash in order to sequentially link
chunks of discourse. These chunks of discourse may either be temporal events, or they
may be non-temporal events as well, such as commentary. Also, the fact that mii dash
may also occur with both conjunct and independent order verbs (showing a loose
syntactic attachment to its containing clauses, or perhaps none) further supports the claim
that mii dash is indeed a discourse marker in its own right. Like other discourse
connectives, it largely derives its discourse sequencing feature from sentence-level
phenomena – in this case, from the underlying deictic feature of the deictic particle mii.
3.1.2 Second position
Ojibwe is a language which makes heavy use of the second position. For example,
in the formation of common interrogative expressions in Ojibwe, the interrogative
particle ina, or its clitic form -na, must occur as the second element of its containing
sentence or clause, e.g. geyaabi ina gibakade ‘Are you still hungry?’ Given this fact, it is
no surprise then that a significant number of Ojibwe discourse markers, such as idash
below or the second position mystery particles to be discussed later, would find a home in
second position as well. In the broader discussion of discourse markers across languages,
the discussion on discourse markers which occur in second position must inevitably
expand the locations in which discourse markers may occur to include second position.
While location itself cannot be a formal criterion for the defining of discourse markers, a
discussion delimited by location (as I have done here) shows that languages in general,
including Ojibwe, may utilize the existing machinery or infrastructure (e.g. common use
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