A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

had finished boiling sap. In (78c), using clitic -sa, she gets to her point, i.e. that the lake
was open anyway. This point allows her to provide the circumstances which led to the
eventual seeing of the big boat in (78d). Note that the exact details in (78b) are really not
material to her gist statement in (78c). The use of the hedge word maagizhaa ‘maybe’
and dubitative inflection on the verbs in (78b), i.e. -gwen, suggests that she is unsure of
the exact reasons why she was on that beach. The point that she was making in the end
was that the lake was open, and it was this expression that was accented by -sa.
Sometimes these gist expressions are summations of prior guess work. In such
cases, there are precursory descriptions of events or objects which represent only a sub-
group of those events or objects, and then a follow up expression, accented by isa, which
sums up those descriptions. The following example illustrates this usage of isa.
(79) isa (Kegg 1991:44-45)
Akina gegoo omaajiidoonaawaan iniw akikoon, bakwezhigan, akina sa gegoo
all thing they take him/her along that kettles flour all DM thing
waa-aabajitoowaad wii-wiisiniwaad.
what they want to use when they want to eat
‘We took everything along, kettles, flour, everything [sa] they wanted to have to eat.’
In this example, kettles and flour represent only a sub-group of items that they would
bring along. Again, the exact items are not important. Rather, the point being made here
is that they would bring what they wanted to eat, i.e. akina sa gegoo waa-aabajitoowaad
wii-wiisiniwaad ‘everything they wanted to have to eat’, and it is this point, or gist
expression, which is accented with isa.
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