A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

mark these events as being more salient or foregrounded. As we will see in the sections
to come, this is one of the features makes it a prime target for work at the discourse level.
4.2 Discourse use of conjuncts
The conjunct has uses at the discourse level as well. Though conjuncts at the
sentence level function largely as subordinate clauses or adjunct clauses (except for the
limited cases of the situational immediacy examples), they also have connective and
temporal immediacy features as well. It is perhaps no surprise then that the conjunct
would be exploited for these features, since connectivity and immediacy are both features
which are well suited to create cohesion within narratives. Though largely syntactically
subordinate in nature at the sentence level, at the discourse level, conjuncts may function
as independent clauses. This was also the case with the Rhodes example for a related
dialect of Ojibwe. Given that independent order verbs already serve this function (at
least at the sentence level), the question becomes then: If both independent order verbs
and conjunct order verbs may function as independent clauses within discourse, what
roles do they each play within discourse? As we will see, both the conjunct and
independent order have distinct functions within discourse. In short, conjuncts carry the
eventline structure of a narrative, while independent order verbs carry background and
quotation phenomena. Background content is defined here as anything that gives
contextualization to eventline structures. Eventline is defined her as content which
moves the story along, and is the backbone of the story. What it is meant by “backbone”
is that if you were to make a list of only the eventline verbs, you would get a basic, albeit
rudimentary, summary of the story in general. Note that this is also true for many of the
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