A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

) Ojibwemon bina naa!
speak Ojibwe to me DM DM
‘Speak Ojibwe damn it!’
While the imperative form ojibwemotawishin in (104a) is quite direct in itself, its
propositional content is strengthened even more by the use of bina. One of my
consultants recounted to me once that he would use the imperative (with bina) in (104a)
with other Ojibwe speakers when they would use English with him, rather than Ojibwe. I
have personally heard one of my consultants use the imperative (with bina naa) in (104b)
with another elder who complained that no one speaks Ojibwe anymore. 61 For both of
these examples, since it is well known among Ojibwe speakers that Ojibwe is an
endangered language, the general expectation is that it should be used whenever possible,
especially between native speakers. In essence, the speaker sees the interlocutor’s actions
as contradictory to general expectation (or at least, to the speaker’s expectation) and tries
to correct that action by an imperative expression, accenting it with bina.
When used with Ojibwe jussive expressions, bina has the same effect, increasing the
illocutionary force of the jussive expression. A jussive, according to Trask, is like a
“third-person imperative” in that it is an imperative expression such as the English Let
them eat cake! where an imperative form is interpreted as being directed at someone
other than the addressee (see Trask 1993:150). In Ojibwe, jussive constructions usually
involve the use of maanoo ‘let it be’, as in the following examples.
61
Discourse marker naa will be discussed in detail in Section 3.2.2.7.3.1.
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