A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

conjoin larger discourse units above the sentence level as well. In this way, the conjunct
too, is being exploited as well, since, as we will see, that it is the conjunct’s connective
and temporal immediacy features which lend themselves to work at the discourse level.
In the following sections, both the sentence level and discourse functions of the
conjunct will be discussed. This discussion will show that it is the plain conjunct verb
which is borrowed to mark the eventline structure of a story or narrative within discourse.
Ultimately, I will show that the same mechanism which allows individual sentence level
grammatical/lexical forms to be exploited for discourse work, is also at work to allow the
use of TAM forms, morphological forms such as the conjunct, to be exploited for
discourse work as well.
4.1 Sentence level use of conjuncts
4.1.1 Dependent clauses
Within sentence grammars, plain conjunct verbs usually function as dependent
clauses, or subordinate clauses. For example, plain conjuncts may serve as temporal
subordinate clauses, serve as complements of predicative words, or as embedded clauses.
The point here though is that the use of the conjunct is syntactically subordinate, and
cannot act as the predicative meat of a clause or phrase within sentence grammars. The
following examples show these uses. For clarity, the conjunct verbs in question have
been glossed to show more morphological structure than the other words around them.
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