A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

Interestingly, my consultants report that awenh is the word that males use, and that inenh
is the women’s version. In actual practice, however, women also use awenh. The
consultant who made the resounding interjection in (70a) was a woman, and one of my
other women consultants also admitted that even though she knows that awenh is
primarily used by males, that she uses it too.
3.2.1.4 aaniish
Mystery particle aaniish has varying forms. Most often, it occurs as the cluster
aaniish naa, with minor occurrences of a phonologically reduced form aanish naa, or
lone particle aanish. The use of naa appears to increase the illocutionary force of
aaniish. 56 Also, speakers, when queried, inflate the reduced form aanish back to aaniish.
Therefore, I will collectively refer to all variants as just aaniish. The major function of
aaniish is to mark justifications or qualifications of actions, behaviors, or conditions,
having the force of the English well, after all, or the phrase what do you expect? A
typical situation where aaniish might be used is where there is some misalignment of
expectations or assumptions, either on the part of the speaker or some other person in
relation to someone or something, and the speaker feels a need to provide some statement
which would explain, qualify, justify, or reconcile that misalignment. Examples of this
usage are shown with all three variants in the following examples.
56
The function of naa is discussed in more detail in Section 3.2.2.7.3.
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