A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

descriptions, however, are not important, and are in a sense, relinquished in order to get
to the point. In such cases, the speaker offers up a set of general descriptions (which may
be guesses, or a sub-group of events) of some process, event, or even utterances by
people, after which the speaker provides a gist sentence or expression, accented by isa,
which gets to the eventual main point. This usage is quite consistent in the Kegg stories,
and the following example is typical. The following excerpt comes from a story about a
little girl seeing a steam boat from off shore. Before seeing this boat, however, she
describes the circumstances which allowed her to see it.
(78) isa (Kegg 1991:26-27)
a) Mii eta go imaa gikendamaan namadabiyaan jiigibiig.
DP only EMPH there I know I am sitting on the shore
b) Maagizhaa gaye gaa-wewebanaabiiwaagwen, maagizhaa gaye
maybe also they must have been fishing maybe also
gaa-ishkwaa-iskigamizigewaagwen.
they must have finished boiling sap
c) Gii-paakibii’an sa wiin igo.
lake was open DM for sure EMPH
d) Namadabiyaan ganawaabandamaan gichi-jiimaan bimibidemagak naawagaam.
I am sitting I am watching it big boat going by middle of lake
a) ‘All I remember is sitting on the shore.
b) Maybe they were fishing or had just finished boiling sap.
c) The lake was open anyway.
d) I was sitting there watching a big boat go across the middle of the lake.’
In this story, we find a little girl sitting on a shore. In (78b), she tries to recall the
possible reasons why she was sitting on that shore, i.e. that they were either fishing or
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