CHAPTER SEVEN GROUNDING BELIEFS: STRUCTURED VARIATION IN CANADIAN DISCOURSE PARTICLES MARTINA WILTSCHKO AND JOHANNES HEIM Abstract: The sentence final particle eh is often treated as a shibboleth of Canadian English. It has been described extensively in the literature, and yet a concise definition of its function remains elusive: researchers identify numerous functions for eh, without providing a way to predict the distribution of these functions. How can a simplex form like eh be so complex when it comes to its function? We show that its complexity derives from the fact that eh, like any other unit of language, interacts with context, including the syntactic and discourse contexts. We develop an analysis that is able to take into consideration how this interaction comes about. This allows us to identify the contextual variables responsible for the variation in function of eh, and it also allows us to understand how eh differs from another (apparently simplex) sentence final tag, namely huh. Die Grenzen meiner Sprache beteuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. ‘The limits of my knowledge are the limits of my world.’ Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 5.6.