A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

conjunct gii-pabanaazomag is not acting as a subordinate clause however (as we would
expect), but as an independent clause, showing temporal immediacy. In other words, the
juxtaposition of the plain conjunct gii-pabanaazomag ‘I chewed her out’ with the
independent clause ingii-kanoonaa ‘I called her’ denotes that the chewing out occurs
immediately upon calling Sara, not sometime after calling her. This behavior is perhaps
demonstrated better in an example cited by Rhodes (1979:111) for a related dialect of
Ojibwe. In the following example, there are two actions: going to bed at night, and
getting up in the morning, actions which cannot occur immediately one after another.
(135) Rhodes’ example (Rhodes 1979:111)
a) *Miin’waa dash nbaagning gii-gwishmo, ge ggizheb gii-nishkaad.
and then in bed PAST-lay down/INDEP also morning PAST-get up-3/CONJ
‘Next he went to bed, and got up the [next] morning.’
b) Miin’waa dash nbaagning gii-gwishmo, ge ggizheb gii-nishkaa.
and then in bed PAST-lay down/INDEP also morning PAST-get up/INDEP
‘Next he went to bed, and got up the [next] morning.’
These two examples are identical except that the verb in the second clause of (135a) is
inflected as a conjunct, while its counterpart in (135b) is inflected as an independent verb.
Note that the conjunct order inflected verb gii-nishkaad (evinced by its conjunct suffix -d
‘third person’) in (135a) is pragmatically ungrammatical precisely because, as Rhodes
explains, the act of getting up cannot be both “immediate and in the morning” (Rhodes
1979:111). According to my consultants, these facts are true at Mille Lacs as well.
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