A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

and I almost died. The speaker is conveying to his interlocutor the seriousness of his
statements, which were, indeed, very serious.
3.2.1.2 mii as a command softener
Mii may have a softening affect as well when used with imperatives. When used in
this manner, mii usually co-occurs with the preverbal unit izhi, and has the effect of
decreasing the force of imperatives to the point that they are really not imperatives any
longer, but suggestions. This may be seen in the following example where at one of my
meetings with my consultants, I was eye-ing a bowl of delicious wild rice with cut-up
wieners in it. I had already had a few bowls, but still wanted more. One of my
consultants caught me looking at the bowl and said to me the following utterance
accented by mii and the preverb (or relative root) izhi.
(69) mii as an imperative softener (Mille Lacs Sessions)
Mii-go izhi-gidaanawen.
DM-EMPH RR-eat it up
‘Go ahead and eat it up.’
‘It’s okay if you eat it up.’
Upon examining this example, a few things are noticeable. First, mii is not functioning as
a deictic particle, as an aspectual marker, nor as a discourse sequencer. Rather, its
function here is purely to soften the “blow” of the imperative gidaanowen ‘eat it up!’, so
that it is less direct to interlocutors. Second, the preverbal unit izhi, whose function in
other contexts is as a relative root or as a discourse sequencer itself, has both no referent
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