A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

What this appears to suggest is that it is the little girl who is scared, not the women.
Therefore, the use of gosha in the example, appears to signal the relieving revelation that
it was only a dog following her home, and not something more serious.
Other examples of gosha show the relief revealing feature of gosha. For example, at
one of our meetings, an elder showed up with some other visitors. When offered food by
another elder, the visiting elder said the following utterance, accented with gosha.
(98) gosha
a) Imbaa-nanda-wiisin gosha.
I am looking around to eat DM
‘I’m looking for some place to eat [gosha].’
In (98), what is implied here with gosha is that the visiting elder was actually hungry, but
was reserved about helping herself to the potluck, possibly because she had not brought
anything to contribute to the potluck. The feeling that gosha helps to establish in this
response is best represented by the English phrase: Actually, I WAS hungry, and I’m glad
you asked. Gosha, therefore, functioned in this example to reveal their true disposition,
but only after the speaker was relieved to find out that it was okay to eat.
The emotional token of relief is not always a requirement for the use of gosha
however, since sometimes, the speaker is simply revealing something significant to the
situation at hand. In this way, gosha is similar to sha, but unlike sha in that it does not
appear to assign blame, or is not used to censure anyone. Gosha merely strengthens the
relevant revelation at hand. For example, in the following interaction, Speaker C makes
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