A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

3.2 Mystery particles
The discourse particles to be described in the following sections are discourse
markers which are notoriously hard to characterize, and are similar to some of the
discourse markers described by Schiffrin for English, such as oh and well (Schiffrin
1987). The major difference between these markers and those already described in prior
sections is that these particles carry no, or very little, lexical content. As a result, they are
very difficult to characterize (if at all) as individual words. For example, English
speakers would be hard pressed to explain the meaning of oh and well with any degree of
confidence. The same is true for these Ojibwe particles. In the old missionary dictionary
compiled by Frederic Baraga, for example, the difficulty in defining these types of
particles is evident from his statement in regards to the particle gosha, where he is forced
to explain its pragmatic use within discourse rather than to provide a simple lexical
meaning: “This word cannot be given in English. It signifies that a repetition is made, or
that something which is told, is known” (Baraga 1878, 1880, 1992:142). Even in a
pedagogical reference grammar written by a native speaker of Ojibwe from the Lac Seul
community in Canada, mystery particles gosha, goda, and naa are listed only as “filler
word[s]” (Ningewance 2004:254, 315). Like the markers oh and well, these Ojibwe
discourse particles can only be characterized based upon their function in discourse.
Therefore, in order to describe these largely indefinable particles, the term MYSTERY
PARTICLE will be used. This term was first coined by Longacre (1976) in his description
of such particles in some indigenous languages of Central and South America. In
describing the following Ojibwe particles, I follow Longacre in the formal use of the term
mystery particle, not because they are mysteries to their users who have an unconscious
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