A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

Here, sha reveals the unreasonableness of the interlocutor’s assumption, go is emphatic,
and naa is the pleading particle. The combination allows the speaker to refute the
interlocutor’s faulty logic, this time, a wrong assumption about the age of the elder.
In short, sha allows speakers to set their interlocutors straight, whether it is just a
simple correction in real-world deictic references, e.g. No, you!, providing bewildered
interlocutors with an answer to a query, or in identifying and confronting interlocutors
with their faulty assumptions or actions. In all cases, the use of sha helps to set
interlocutors straight in some way by revealing the truth or reality of a situation, while
also dealing them some level of derision.
3.2.2.3 gosha
Mystery particle gosha is similar to lone mystery particle sha, in that, when speakers
use it, they are making some type of revelation that is surprising, not obvious,
unsuspected, or unexpected. The difference, however, seems to be that when gosha is
used, there is relief that what was just revealed is not such a big deal as was initially
thought before the revelation. In a way, this is polar opposite from sha, where the
information revealed with sha was perceived as significant, the information revealed by
gosha usually turns out not to be. This function has roughly the feeling of the English
discourse marker actually, which serves the function in English of revealing the truth or
perceived truth of a situation. This can be seen in the following example where a little
girl had stolen and later ate some fine broken wild rice that flew out from the winnowing
process. Later that night, she got bloated from eating the rice, and started throwing up.
Her grandmother got really scared as there was no Indian doctor around. In the end, her
163