And now, co-occurrence and functionality of discourse markers on the Oregon Coast

Abstract

This paper compares the usage patterns or usage dynamics of discourse markers and their combinations in Alsea and Siuslaw, two dormant languages of the Oregon Coast with a long history of contact and convergence. Like many languages of the Pacific Northwest Coast, Alsea and Siuslaw have a set of clause-initial markers mostly used for adverbial and pragmatic functions. These markers often co-occur, and in both languages clauses in connected discourse have zero to four such markers. Despite the similar potential range for combinations, the patterns by which these markers are used in the two languages differ: discourse markers co-occur much more frequently in Alsea, in more varied combinations, and their relative order tends to be more set. We propose that this is correlated with the coding means used to structure discourse in the two languages, particularly the different functions of individual markers and of their common combinations. We illustrate this by comparing the uses of two discourse markers, Alsea tem and Siuslaw ᵘɬ roughly translatable to English by “and”, and the uses of their combination with Alsea múⁿhū and Siuslaw wàn, roughly translatable to English by “now, then”.