A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

ge-miinigooyang.
that we’ll be given
i) ‘It’s they who own it, how much they charge for giving us a diagnosis.
ii) That is when they send us to the drug store with a prescription that the
doctor wrote out for the appropriate medicine.’
c) mii as a determiner (Mille Lacs Sessions)
i) A’aw (=) Jaaj. ii) Mii a’aw (=) Jaaj.
that one George DET that one George
‘That one (focused) is George.’ ‘That very one is George.’
In (43a,b), mii stands in for both a physical object and a temporal time frame,
respectively. For example, in (43a), mii stands in for the noun phrase what you said. In
(43b.ii), mii stands in for the time frame associated with the phrase how much they
charge for giving us a diagnosis. Both tokens of mii make anaphoric reference to a prior
referent. The only difference between these two occurrences of mii is that in (43a), the
complement of mii is a nominalized verb, i.e. gaa-ikidoyan ‘what you said’; and in
(43b.ii), the complement of mii is a plain conjunct verb, i.e. izhinizha’onang ‘that s/he
sends us’. In the nominal predicate construction in (43c.ii), however, mii does not stand
in for anything, but rather, acts like a determiner, in that, it modifies another element. Its
function as a modifier is to further focus the demonstrative a’aw ‘that one’, which is
already in a syntactically focused position. 42 The use of mii in this way allows speakers
42
The unmarked word order for the nominal predicate construction “that is George” (no emphasis on that)
would be Jaaj a’aw, putting the noun first followed by the demonstrative a’aw (with no copula). Switching
the demonstrative a’aw to a position before the noun results in a focus construction which puts emphasis on
a’aw, the initial element, e.g. a’aw Jaaj ‘that is George’ (emphasis on that). See Fairbanks 2008
(forthcoming) for a full discussion.
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