A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

3.2.2.1.1 isa as a marker of closings
One of the most common uses of isa is its use by speakers to mark the end of a story
or narrative, marking conclusivity on the action plane of discourse. It has roughly the
meaning or attitude of the English it is finally time. It is on the action plane of discourse
because the speaker uses isa to signal that an end to their discourse has arrived. These
closings typically involve the use of demonstrative pronoun i'iw ‘that’ and quantitative
particle minik ‘amount’ along with the deictic particle mii in the formation of mii-clauses
(see Fairbanks, forthcoming, Valentine 2001:963-973, Rhodes 1998:286-294 regarding
mii-clauses). The following expressions are typical endings for the stories in Kegg
(1991).
(74) Narrative closings
a) Mii sa go i'iw.
that DM EMPH that
‘That’s it.’
b) Mii sa go minik.
that DM EMPH amount
‘That’s all.’
In the Kegg collection of stories (a total of 41 stories), closings which employed the use
of sa were, by far, the most common. Less common were the closing statements without
isa. In such cases, in the absence of the isa, it was the propositional content which bore
much of the burden of signaling the end to the story. As with the conclusory closings
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