A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

c) Mii-gegaa gii-pi-niboyaan.
so-almost that I died coming
d) Aapiji ningii-pi-aakoz nayaanzh 55 biinish noongom.
extremely I was sick coming even till now
e) Gegaa zhayigwa negadamaan o’o aki.
almost already I leaving this earth
f) Endogwen geyaabi midaasogon ge-bimaadiziyaan.
it is doubtful yet ten days that I will be living
a) ‘My comrade, a little I tell you.
b) [Mii-sa] I barely made it here.
c) [Mii] I almost died.
d) I’m really sick even until today.
e) It’s almost time for me to leave this earth.
f) It is doubtful that I have ten days left to live.’
In (68), there are two tokens of mii within mii-clauses, and the question immediately
becomes, why? If mii is understood to be a discourse sequencer here, then the use of mii-
clauses here is odd, since it is unclear what temporal events mii would be linking. The
deictic uses of mii do not appear to be indicated here either. Furthermore, the use of mii-
clauses to begin letters in this fashion is inconsistent with the writing patterns of the other
letters from native speakers to Reverend Gilfillan. If we take into account the context of
this letter, however, it become immediately clear why the speaker uses mii-clauses in
(68b,c). The speaker is using mii as a discourse stressor (or as a veridical marker). In
other words, mii marks the speakers serious and dire statements I barely made it here,
55
My consultants and I are unfamiliar with this word and so I am unsure of its correct spelling in the
current orthography. The spelling in the original letter is nai-andj. My consultants and I also provided the
translation of this excerpt, since most of the accompanying English translation was missing in the original
document that I obtained from the Minnesota Historical Society. Only the first line and part of the second
sentence of the English translation was available in the original document.
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