A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

their referential and/or grammatical usage as conjunctions, are largely mirrored in their
use as discourse markers.
On the other hand, discourse markers oh and well, have either no, or very little,
referential meaning. These types of discourse markers are much freer to have functions
within other planes of discourse. Schiffrin notes that “if an expression used as a marker
does have meaning, its primary use in discourse will be in the organization of referential
meaning at a textual level – and that if a marker does not have meaning, its primary use
will be elsewhere” (Schiffrin 1987: 319). This tendency is exactly what we observe in
the behavior of discourse markers cross-linguistically. 17
So, this naturally divides discourse markers into two groups: those which are
primarily textual (e.g. connectives such as and, but, or, so, because, now, then), and those
which are interpersonal in nature, or largely pragmatic (e.g. oh, well). Brinton (1996:38)
also suggests that discourse markers fall into two categories (having a two-fold function):
those which belong to the textual mode of language, and those which belong to the
interpersonal mode of language. 18 According to Brinton, in the textual mode, the speaker
structures meaning as text, creating cohesive passages of discourse. The interpersonal
mode is the expression of the speaker’s attitudes, evaluation, judgments, expectations,
discourse uses of various items such as now, well, and however. The cross-linguistic literature is replete
with this sort of behavior by discourse markers: Maschler (1997:197-198) for Israeli Hebrew where
discourse marker ta yode’a ‘y’know’ may occur with the literal meaning ‘you know’; Biq (1990:205) for
Mandarin where discourse connective na and name also have grammatical functions as demonstratives;
Jucker & Smith (1998:183-184) for English where discourse marker like has lexical uses as a verb,
preposition, suffix, and conjunction; Shloush (1998:62) for the Hebrew discourse marker bekicur ‘in short’
which has a function as an adverbial; Ariel (1998:226) for the Hebrew discourse marker harey ‘after all’
which has a grammatical function as a sentence adverbial, et al. So, there is ample cross-linguistic
evidence in support of the primary and secondary features of discourse markers.
17
This natural divide is what is observed for Ojibwe discourse and explains the organization of this paper
into textual and interpersonal discourse (“mystery particles”) markers.
18
She uses the term PRAGMATIC MARKER as synonymous with the term DISCOURSE MARKER.
29