A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

support (Schiffrin 1987:137). (35c-e) describes the experiences of the older daughter,
and (35f-j) describes the experiences of the younger. For example, the first topic, my
older daughter (underlined), is expanded into two event structures: 1) she didn’t become
uh pregnant until he graduated, and 2) uh: she feels that once her children are in school,
she’d like to go back, both of which are prefaced by and. The second discourse topic, my
younger daughter (also underlined), is expanded into two event structures as well:
1) they got married when she was eighteen, and 2) And she uh: was just starting Beaver.
What this ultimately shows is that and in English is able to link discourse topics as well
as linking their associated event structures. A major pattern in Ojibwe, however, shows
that miinawaa usually only links the discourse topics, leaving event structures associated
with those individual topics to be marked with asyndetic connection ‘zero’ (i.e. the
juxtaposition of clauses or sentences). 40 This can be demonstrated with the following
example.
40
A distinction must be made here regarding topics which are semantically related and those which are not.
The discourse topics spoken of here are those which are semantically related. For example, in the
upcoming example, the two topics being coordinated are semantically related to the main topic of the story,
an old man and his daily traveling habits. Schiffrin does not make a distinction, since English may mark
both semantically related topics and unrelated ones with and. As we will see, this is not the case for
Ojibwe, since the broad topics which make up a narrative in Ojibwe which are not semantically related are
marked by contrastive marker idash. In this way, it is idash which allows speakers to move on to new
topics within narratives. The point here is, however, that Ojibwe appears to make more use of asyndetic
connections in coordinating expanded event structures than does English. This is true for asyndetic
connections in Ojibwe in general.
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