A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

drunks, but saw the mysterious figure instead. Prior to the statement in (70b), the
speaker, related that as a little girl, she once got seriously ill from taking a pinch of snuff
tobacco and putting it in her mouth (apparently to imitate the adults). She consequently
became very ill and started throwing up. She was nearly convulsing. She uses aanish
naa to accent her utterance in (71b) which represents a justification for her sudden
illness. In (71c), the speaker was asked by a man to explain how one might mix the
Indian religion with the White Man’s religion in order to practice both. Rather than
providing them with an answer they want, he tells them that they should not mix the two
and to leave it alone. Because his answer was contrary to their expectations, he qualifies
his statement they asked me within his retelling of this story with aanish in order to
convey the attitude they asked me for my opinion and I gave it to them even though they
didn’t like it. In all of these examples, there is some misalignment of expectation to
which the speaker must address. In (71a), a hearer might misunderstand why the woman
was looking out of her window early in the morning; in (71b), the speaker did not expect
snuff tobacco to be so potent, and in (71c), the man asking about combining religions was
presumably expecting an answer that was in line with his question, but ultimately did not
get one. For such misalignments, the various speakers in these examples provided
statements which either sought to correct the respective misalignment, or justify it.
Sometimes, aaniish allows the speaker to provide extra-topical information or extra-
topical background information, through a qualification of some action or behavior. This
is shown by the following example where the speaker uses aanish naa to qualify her own
hard work.
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