A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

(Bazzanella 1990:633 for insomma), and to some extent English (Schiffrin 1987:276,
340), the cross-linguistic evidence shows that many discourse markers are
morphologically bound to their host words as either clitics or affixes. Recall that in
Yagua, discourse clitic jį́ į́ ta occurred in second position. As we will see also, Ojibwe has
many markers which are confined to second position. Ojibwe also shows one marker
occurring as a prefix-like element called a relative preverb (to be discussed in Section
3.1.3.1). Given these facts then, we cannot stipulate syntactic detachability as a test for
the identification of discourse markers.
Finally, tonic stress, or the lack of stress, cannot be stipulated either, since many
discourse markers do not appear to turn on this distinction. For example, as we will see
for Ojibwe, the second position word idash and its phonologically reduced clitic form -sh
both serve the same discourse function. In Schiffrin’s data, there appeared to be no
difference in discourse function between the full form of because and its phonologically
reduced form cause. Moreover, there are no references in the cross-linguistic literature
where tonic stress, or lack thereof, played any significant role in their status as discourse
markers. Such a characterization would seem to exclude discourse markers which do not
have a range of prosodic contours, such as the Ojibwe discourse marker sha (to be
discussed within the body of this thesis). To my knowledge, this marker has only one
prosodic contour, but still has a role within discourse. Whether a particular marker has
stress or not appears to be constrained by the language itself, not by constraints
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