Relevance, cohesion, and the storyline: The discourse function of the Karuk particle káruma

This paper provides an analysis of the factors conditioning the appearance of the Karuk discourse marker káruma and the contributions it makes to discourse organization. We claim that the effect of káruma is to highlight especially relevant information that advances the storyline of a narrative, contributing to dramatic tension. We show that an adequate account of káruma requires that we consider the hearer's interpretation of the information marked as significant in terms of two things: the speaker's stylistic choice in the placement of káruma and features of coherence and cohesion in the text surrounding this marker. Additionally, our analysis draws on the Mental Spaces model of conceptual structures to explicate relationships between narrator, audience, speaker(s), and hearer(s). This study also contributes to the cross-linguistic inventory of functions and effects of discourse markers. Understanding the range of possible functions of discourse markers is a prerequisite for a comprehensive theory of how linguistic resources are deployed in organizing information.