A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

(Jones and Coleman 1979:91)
“In light of our analysis here, it seems strange (at least from the perspective of
narrative) that the mode that carries the eventline material is called conjunct in
Algonquian literature, whereas the mode that primarily serves to carry background
material is called independent. Undoubtedly these labels, which have been longestablished
in Algonquian studies are due to the fact that isolated sentences were the
primary objects of study, where the conjunct was not so apt to occur except in its
more idiomatic and rather subordinate uses, e.g., locative and temporal expressions.
Conjunct was thus adopted as a term to indicate its supposedly subordinate nature.
It is not surprising that the more important eventline use of the conjunct was not
even apparent then, since such use would only be recognized in the context of an
entire text.”
It is this behavior, however, which is relevant to our discussion of discourse markers,
since what is really going on, I argue, is that the conjunct order of inflection itself is
being borrowed, or exploited, for work at the discourse level in much the same way that
individual lexical or grammatical items are exploited for use within discourse. Therefore,
based upon what we know about the behavior of discourse markers, there is no need to
try to reconcile both uses into one category. In short, within sentence grammars,
conjuncts are dependent clauses, but in discourse (as we will see), they may be used to
mark eventline structure.
Now, it should also be noted here that the selection of the conjunct to carry eventline
structure is not random, just as the selection of many lexical or grammatical items at the
sentence level is not random. Recall that for many of the discourse connectives that it
was their specific lexical or grammatical use at the sentence level that was exploited for
work at the discourse level, e.g. coordinating conjunction miinawaa which functioned at
the sentence level to conjoin similar grammatical categories, but also was shown to
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