A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

speaker was given a new horse, and because the horse had spots on it that resembled
vomit (i.e. an appaloosa), he decided to call his new horse “Puke.” He prefaces his
statement of resolve in (73b.iii) with aaniish. In both cases, the speakers have choices.
The expected choice, or the unexpected one. In (73a), for example, the speaker has two
choices: hang the bough, or don’t. Since it is in the speaker’s best interest to hang the
bough, she does so. In (74b), the speaker may call his horse anything he wants, but opts
to call the horse as he perceives it, as looking like puke.
The common thread for all of these examples is the constant presence of competing
expectations, a potential for misalignment of those expectations, and the pressure to
reconcile those expectations. Many times, misaligned expectations or assumptions can
have negative consequences for the speaker who runs the risk of looking lazy or foolish,
or whose actions or motivations might be misunderstood by interlocutors. As a remedy
for this, a speaker may use aaniish to provide justifications, qualifications, or
explanations which would align interlocutor expectations and assumptions with those of
the speaker.
3.2.2 Second position mystery particles
The mystery particles in the following sections all occur in the second position of a
sentence or clause. The second position markers to be discussed in the following sections
are isa, sha, gosha, bina, and naa. Many of these mystery particles occur within a
number of discourse marker clusters as well. The clusters to be discussed will be sa go,
sha go naa, gosha naa, sha naa, da naa, bina naa, and sa naa. Also, because it has been
the practice for other researchers to analyzed such clusters as occurring in one position,
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