A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

central field of the sentence” (Davidsen-Nielsen 1996:299). 29 As we will see, Ojibwe
discourse markers show a broader affinity for docking spots, including initial position,
second position, as well as those within the morphological environment in the form of
clitics and preverbs.
Fourth, discourse work is not restricted to individual words, affixes, preverbs, or
lexicalized phrases, or even mystery particles, but is extended to tense-aspect systems as
well. TAM systems, i.e. inflectional morphology, are exploited in order to accomplish
work above the sentence level in the same way that individual grammatical or lexical
items are exploited for this same reason. As we already have seen, inflectional systems
which have a particular grammatical function within sentence grammars, may be used to
provide overall textual cohesion. This aspect of discourse marking is largely left out of
discussions surrounding discourse markers, especially in defining them. 30 The
exploitation of inflectional morphology for discourse work in this way has to be included,
I argue, if we are to understand the true mechanism behind discourse markers. This
perhaps means that we need to broaden the term discourse marker to include the use of
inflectional morphology.
Fifth, there is no evidence that discourse markers must be syntactically detached
from their host clauses, as suggested by Schiffrin’s initial characterization. While
flexibility of position might be a trait sometimes observed for discourse markers in some
less-inflected languages such as Spanish (Schwenter 1996:858 for o sea) and Italian
29
Still, in small number of languages, the movement of discourse markers is more free to float within host
clauses. Italian and Finnish, for example, show examples of individual discourse markers which may
appear in various locations throughout the clause (Bazzanella 1990 and Hakulinen et. al 1992,
respectively). English has discourse markers which may move freely within utterances as well, e.g.
y’know, but the overall preference for English discourse markers is still initial position.
30
I am using the term discourse marking as a way of making a distinction between discourse markers
(individual items or lexicalized phrases) and the use of inflectional morphology for discourse work.
54