A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

While the Rhodes example above occurred with a connective, ge ‘also’, the example
in (135) suggests that such occurrence is optional. In fact, this connective feature of the
conjunct may be demonstrated in the following excerpt from a story where a series of
actions are conjoined, all without the use of a connective.
(136) Connective feature of the conjunct (Clark 2003:55, audio)
Shke, wa’aw nookomisiban mii-ko gaa-paa-izhi-mamood o-mashkiki
look this my grandmother used to went around picking this medicine
gekendaagwadinig ge-inikaagod a’aw anishinaabe, gii-agoodood endaad,
known to be used for that Indian she hanged it up her house
gii-paasang, gii-na’inang.
she dried it she put it away
‘You see, my grandmother used to pick medicine known to be good for people,
and would hang it in her house, dry it, and put it away.’
In the passage in (136), we find a string of three conjunct verbs linked together without a
connective word or coordinating conjunction, such as miinawaa ‘and’ or gaye ‘also’.
While the English gloss can tolerate some absence of a connector (except for the last
verb), the Ojibwe sentence shows that it may tolerate a total absence of any connectors at
all and still remain grammatical. This suggests, then, that the conjunct not only denotes
the immediacy of actions in relation to one another, but that the conjunct also possesses a
connective feature which allows the stringing together of the very verbs denoting those
actions.
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