A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

(66) mii in taboos (from Benjamin, unpublished document) 53
a) Giishpin mindaweyan, miigo gezhiwawaabishkiganzhiiyan.
if you pout VER.EMPH you will have white spots on fingernails
‘If you like to Mindawe [pout], you will have telltale “white spots” on your
fingernails!’
b) Giishpin zazaagiziyan, miigo gezhizipogwayaweyan.
if you are stingy VER.EMPH you will have a crater in the back of your neck
‘If you are Zazaagiz [stingy], you will have a crater in the back of your neck!’
The second clause of each statement in (66) is accented by mystery particle mii. Mii, in
turn, is accented by the emphatic clitic go, and the presence of mii triggers the use of
conjunct order inflection on the verbal complexes (i.e. mii-clauses), rather than the use of
independent order inflection (which would not include the use of mii here). What this
essentially means is that speakers have two morphological options in representing these
future events, mii-clauses or independent clauses. The question here is, why use mii-
clauses when independent clauses would accomplish the same function. The answer lies
in the function of mystery particle mii. As argued in my earlier work on mii (Fairbanks
2008, forthcoming), mii-clauses are stronger statements. They are stronger in the sense
that mii conveys the speaker’s attitude of certainty toward their proposition, i.e. an
epistemic function. In other words, the use of mii in these statements signals that
speakers see their proposition as a sure thing, and that there is no doubt that such events
will happen. Independent clauses, on the other hand, would only convey propositional
content, having no such effect, e.g. giga-wawaabishkiganzhii ‘you will have telltale white
53
I have kept the original orthography for this example as it appears in the original document. These
examples come from a handout prepared by one of my consultants (Millie Benjamin). As you can see, she
preferred not to use hyphens when using the Double Vowel orthography.
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