The Ojibwe language is an Algonquin language consisting of a dialect
continuum that spans northern Wisconsin and Michigan up through
Ontario and Southern Saskatchewan in Canada . It
has around 8,000 native speakers in the United States, and over 45,000
speakers in Canada;given that the Ojibwe language has no centralized
language authority (like Navajo or Nunavut Inuit), there is no agreed
orthography across dialects, with most in the US and Southern Canada
opting to use a Roman transliteration, and the northern dialects using
the same Canadian Aboriginal syllabics that are used in Inuktitut and
Cree .
Ojibwe is a polysynthetic language (although less so than, say,
Eskimo-Aluet languages) , and is highly verb-inflectional. Ojibwe is a
head-marking language syntactically , and is usually VOS, although
occasionally VSO, and while word order is usually preferred in these two
forms (especially in Eastern Ojibwe) all word orders are attested
. Ojibwe words can be classified into four main
categories: nouns, pronouns, verbs, and particles. While the nouns,
pronouns and verbs can be highly inflected, particles cannot
.
Nouns in Ojibwe are split into four grammatical categories- gender,
person, obviation, and inclusion . Nouns are highly
inflectional, and can possess references to other nouns via inflection.
For example,nouns that do not reference a possessor may be deleted when
other nouns can convey this information: ihkwee okosisan (gloss:
the-woman her-son) can be reduced to okosisan (gloss:her-son). Nouns
are classified as animate or inanimate (which corresponds to gender)
based on the gender of their stem word, and every noun, including
pronoun, corresponds to one of these genders. As with all grammatical
gender, the rules regarding what qualifies as animate and inanimate are
mostly arbitrary with pronouns, animals, and some plants being animate,
as well as some grammatically animate inanimate objects, like Aashikan
(foot-wrapping, sock) and otaahsan(pants), along with all other
articles of clothing . Ojibwean nouns have
singular and plural forms, can be differentiated by person, as well as
inclusion,- for example nouns like Kiinawint (gloss: We (including the
speaker) and kiinawaa (gloss: You (excluding the speaker)).
A unique feature in Ojibwe, and a few other Algonquin languages is the
use of Obviation in classifying nouns. Obviation differentiates between
third persons in a given context. A third person become obviate when
there is a grammatical link to a more prominent third person(called a
proximate)that has already been mentioned in the sentence. To understand
the difference between the two, we can look at the following sentence:
ninkosihsan owaapaman(gloss: my-son[proximate] he-sees-him[obv]).
Here, the third speaker (he) is the obviate, connected to the more
prominent/significant/closer proximate (my-son) .
Ojibwe also has simple particles, kaa(who will) and kee(that will)
that are compounded with conjunct verbs and create relative clauses.
.
Verbs in Ojibwe are heavily inflectional as well, even more so than
substantives. Verbs can also carry this information, causing
pronoun-drops in most informal usage of the language. For example, the
phrase Niin niinkihkeentaan (gloss: I I-know-it) can be reduced to
niinkihkeentaan (gloss: I know it). A verb consists of a verb stem
with inflectional affixes, and the order in which these affixes are
added on indicate which mood the verb takes: the order of Kinipaa (Ke:
second person + Nipaa: sleep) indicates that the verb is in the
declarative mood (you are sleeping), while nipaan (Nipaa:sleep + n:
second person) is an imperative(sleep!). Voice defines the
subject-object relationship between two individuals in a verb, and is
naturally expressed in only transitive verbs. There are three modes in
Ojibwe, preterit, dubitative, and negative (with present being
unmarked), and can be chained together:compare anohkii-pan (Dubious:
He is probably working) with ahnokiikopan (Dubious-Preterit: He was
probably working) and even kaawin anohkiihsiikopan
(Dubious-Preterit-Negative: He probably wasn’t
working).
Inflection of Verbs
First, let us look at the ways we can inflect verbs in Ojibwe. Verbs in
Ojibwe can be inflected based on person, tense, number, and
transitivity. As transitivity(of the noun that the verb is effecting)
and mood have to do with other words in the sentence, we will only cover
the phenomenon that can be applied to inflect verbs. Also, we will be
handling verbs which are CLASS I Verbs, as defined by Valentine, as
these verbs are the most common and have inflection that shows the most
regularity. First, we look at person and tense, which are both handled
by prefixes that occur before the verb stem, with person first adding
ka in this order. After adding the stem, we go immediately on to
animate-ness (of the verb as it affects the noun it is acting upon),
which in indicated by adding nid to the verb stem. Next, we add the
negative suffix, sii, which negates the verb (except if the verb is an
imperative, in which case different rules to get the negative imperative
apply). Then, we add number, or plurality, indicated as the suffix min
which, combined with the person affix above, gives us all the pronouns
in the language. Finally, we have final verb modifications, which
include excessiveness, compassionateness, and the dissimulative.
Excessiveness refers to a verb action which occurs excessively or too
much, as in nimenekwa, “I drink”, nimenekwaške, I drink too much.
Compassionateness refers to an action that elicits pity. For example, we
have the word nebaa,”he sleeps”, and nebaaše, he exites pity, being
asleep. Finally, we have the dissimulative, which implies that the
action being done is faked or pretended. Using the same stem as before,
we get nebaa, “he sleeps”, followed by “nebaakauso”, he is pretending
to be asleep. These final additions to the verb cannot be chained
together, and always apply as the last rule in the continuation class.
Below we can see a summary of all of these rules below as applied to the
verb “menekwa”:
| Feature Type |
Phoneme |
Surface Form |
Gloss |
| Person |
(+ni, +ki, +0) |
“nimenekwa, kimenekwa, menekwa” |
“I drink, you drink, he/she drinks” |
| Tense |
(+0, +gii, +ga) |
“nimenekwa, nigiimenekwa, nigamenekwa” |
“I drink, I drank, I will drink” |
| Animate |
(+nid) |
“nimenekwanid” |
“I drink(animate)” |
| Negation |
(+sii) |
“nimenekwasii’ |
“I do not drink” |
| Number |
(+min) |
“nimenekwasiimin’ |
“We do not drink” |
| Excessive |
(+ške) |
“nimenekwasiiminške’ |
“I do not drink excessively” |
| Compassionate |
(+še) |
“menekwaše’ |
“He drinks(and arouses pity)” |
| Dissivelative |
(+kauso) |
“nimenekwakauso’ |
“I pretended to drink” |
Inflection of Nouns
Next, let us look at a few examples of the inflection of nouns and the
different types of noun classes that exist in Ojibwe. Ojibwe nouns are
highly inflectional and have features such as being pejorative,
vocative, preterit, and diminutive. In addition, most speakers of modern
day Ojibwe have the od prefixing of a word which is explained in
detail in the next section, along with the phonetic rule that comes with
it. The first feature that is applied with Ojibwe nouns is the
possessive, which has to do with which person relative to the speaker;
the prefixes are nin-my, kin-your, and o, his. Pejorativeness has
to do with a negative modifier that is attached to the noun as a suffix,
such as moos-iš, ‘bad moose’. Vocativeness has to do with respect when
addressing an individual or to designate kinship, as in the phrase
nindanishinaabe-dog, ‘Oh my fellow Ojibwe (people)’. The preterit
suffix is interesting because it is a rare feature among languages in
that it references a noun object which does not exist anymore. We can
see this interesting feature, for example, nimishoomis-iban,
‘my-grandfather -(who is no more, is dead)’, or in the word
ni-mookomaan-iban, which in this case refers to an inanimate object-
‘my-knife-(which I used to have but does not exist anymore)’. My project
also had diminutives, which indicate that the thing/being referred to is
of small size, and is also used as a term of endearment in adults. For
example, we can take the word for mountain wajiw and then the
diminutive wajiwens, ‘hill, small mountain’. The rules can be
summarized as follows with a sample noun, moos, or “Moose”. Keep in
mind that some of these forms, due to their ridiculousness, may never
have appeared as surface forms:
| Feature Type |
Surface Form |
Gloss |
| Possesive |
ni-odamoos |
“My moose” |
| Diminutive |
odamoosens |
“A small moose, a moose calf” |
| Pejorative |
odamoosiš |
“a bad moose” |
| Vocative |
odamoosdog |
“Oh (fellow) moose” |
| Preterit |
odamoosiban |
“A moose which does not exist anymore” |
The way these suffixes effect the word phonetically , and the resulting
surface form of the word is complex and has no consistent rule. To get
around these complex rules, young speakers use historical base forms of
the noun, and apply a simpler phonetic rule to pronounce it.
Innovation and Phonetic Changes of Ojibwe Historical Noun Inflection
One interesting characteristic of Ojibwe’s aforementioned heavy use of
noun inflection is documented by R. Valentine , when he
discusses the use of historical inflection that is used by young
speakers of Ojibwe. Ojibwe has very complex rules when it comes to even
basic inflection of nouns, primarily because the gender of the noun, as
well the complex rules of meter in Ojibwe, interact in inconsistent ways
for many commonly used words. For example, let us use the uninflected
word for shoe mkizin (from which the English work Moccasin is
derived). To inflect this word to get “my shoe”, we first add the
morpheme ni, “me,I”. In typical Latin Ojibwe morphology, this is all
that is usually written, and is understood to mean “my shoe”.
However, the surface form reveals the more complex rules that come
into play in Ojibwe. The initial “ni” creates a ripple effect, where the
first vowel of the basic word moves into the metrically strong position,
which then moves the originally strong vowel into a weak position. This
ripple effect changes vowels based on position (and if they are an odd
or even syllable because of Ojibwe meter). This process is known as
vowel syncope, and is typical of the languages of the Algic family. This
is how we might have the original word “mkizin” but end up with the
inflected word being pronounced “nmakzin”. These complex rules,
according to R. Valentine is one of the reasons why
modern speakers of Ojibwe, many of whom having learned Ojibwe as a
second language after English, or at least with a heavy English
influence is the household, find it difficult to memorize these rules or
understand how to derive the possessed form from the base.
One way that the modern speakers of Ojibwe have come to deal with the
massive variation in word-form alteration from the vowel syncope is to
reanalyze the nouns based on historical base forms and then inflect from
there. Getting this form basically requires us to duplicate the first
strong vowel sound in the base form of the syllable and add it to a
prefix. Let us formalize these rules:
-
Words that have an initial w-glide followed by a (strong meter) aa
become prefixed with odoo- (as the w is actually a semivowel
representation of o)
odoo- \# _ C waa | # _ waa
-
Words that begin with a or have an a in the first vowel position
add oda- to the beginning
oda- \# _ a | # _ C a
-
Words that begin with an o as their first strong syllable add
oda- to the beginning (note that certain dialects with a rounded ø
in the beginning add odoo instead)
oda- \# _ oo | # _ C oo
-
Words that have their first vowel being short i or short o add
odi- to the beginning of the word
odi- \# _ i | # C i | # _ o | # C o
-
Words that begin with a long a aa have the prefix odoo- added
odoo \# _ aa | # C aa
-
Words that end in the (vestigal) singular marker an get another
an added on to them an- \an _ #
-
Between all consonants we insert an i in the case of Eastern
Ojibwe dialects or shwa in the case of the Severn Dialects. Note
that we do this after we apply the above rules (so that the i does
not change which word is strong), and that the addition of the i to
consonants and semivowels is optional
i \C _ C
Before we use the historical form for possessive inflection, we
sometimes drop the original o, though this is not necessary and
depends on how formal the user wishes to sound (with the historical o
being more formal) .
| Modern Ojibwe |
Ojibwe Historical Form |
English |
| mikizin |
odimkizin |
(his/her) shoes |
| mijkaawan |
odimijkaawanan |
(his/her) mitten |
| naagaans |
odoonaagaans |
(her) cup |
| kidwin |
odikidwin |
(his/her) word |
| nokiiwin |
odanokiiwin |
(his/her) work |
Younger speakers have taken the singular form to be the base form, and
have taken the old vowel stem-redupliciates as part of the possessive
prefix. These new prefix forms then become part of the productive rules,
and have for the most part, have completely supplanted the complex vowel
syncope rules taught by the previous generation of L1 Ojibwe speakers.
Ojibwe Initial Change
Another interesting feature that we will follow is the “Initial Change”
rules that we make to the first syllable of the stem. These changes are
required in order for us to switch from any one of several base forms
into forms that are considered (more) inflected. Initial vowel change
affects the first syllable of a verb, making no difference of what this
first syllable actually is - tense prefix, preverb or a verb itself.
-
If the first strong vowel is an aa or an ee, then we add eya
directly before this first strong vowel (and possibly after the
first consonant)
ey- \# _ aa
-
Before this ay rule, we must drop all glide (w or j
occurrences in the beginning of the word
w-> 0, j->0 \# _ aa
-
An initial strong ii is replaced by an aa
ii->aa \# _
-
*Words that have their first vowel *oo replace it with the
semivowel surface form waa (which can occur after the first
consonant)
oo->waa \# _ **
What makes these rules interesting is how, to an Ojibwe speaker, these
rules need to be applied to “basic” forms of a word, which may
themselves be very much inflected! Below, we can see an examples of what
forms or moods may be considered “basic” and the above rules being
applied to them.
| Basic Form |
Initial-Inflection |
English |
English (alt.) |
|
| |
naankan |
neyaanken |
“It is Light” |
“Those (people) who are light” |
| |
teewiisennit |
teyeewissenit |
“If he had eaten” |
“When he had eaten” |
| |
waapete |
eyaapete |
“It is Ripe” |
“Those (things) that are ripe” |
| |
nenkamot |
nenkemot |
“If he/she sings” |
“When he/she sings” |
The initial inflection rules above also have suffixes added to them
after these initial changes are made, so the surface form looks a bit
different. For example, with the first entry of the table naanken
first becomes neyaanken but then gets the duplicated inekin that
represents people/doers of the noun “to be light”, this giving us the
final surface form “neyaankeninekin”, “Those (people) who are light”.
These initial inflexion rules are important, because we will see in
later rules that without them, the application of certain rules in
Ojibwe is impossible.
The adding of these suffixes introduces a certain level of uncertainty,
because while the initial rules that we have just applied are uniform
regardless of the gender or vowel class of the word, the suffixes must
be added on with consideration of the “strong” vowel of the stem.
Epenthesis
Ojibwe historically does not allow for large clusters of consonants to
add on as we add suffixes and prefixes phonetically, so we have to add
an i, or in some dialects, a schwa, between consonant clusters if they
happen to appear as we inflect a word. However, as we will see in the
next section, this is no longer true in most dialects.
Elision
To make Ojibwe words easier to pronounce, a short a or o followed
directly by an e is reduced to just an e.
Vowel Syncope for Salteux Ojibwe
While the rule above describes the historical forms shared by all
speakers of Ojibwe, a very interesting phenomenon has occurred (in
varying degrees) to certain dialects of Ojibwe- especially Salteux and
Eastern Ojibwe- vowel syncope. Vowel Syncope, as described in
Valentine’s extensive grammar of Ojibwe, certain
consonant clusters which would have not been legal in older surface
forms of Ojibwe are now valid and attested forms in Salteux Ojibwe.
After adding these consonant cluster rules for Ojibwe, I also added a
new phonological rule specific to Salteux and Severn Ojibwe, that is,
glide insertion between i and any other Vowel. Some examples can be seen
below:
| Traditional Ojibwe Pronunciation |
Salteux Vowel Syncope |
| odišikodens |
odiškodens |
| kidiwin |
kidwin |
| odamonanig |
odamonang |
| kiodi |
kiyodi |
The propsed rules are focused on updating phonology to be more relevant to
modern day speakers of Ojibwe and the rapid changes many of its dialects
are undergoing; a formalization of the same rules listed above is
provided below.
-
Delete(or bleed) the i or shwa seperating the following consonant
clusters: sk-, -sp-, -st-, -sk, -šk-, -šp-, -št- and -šk-. In this
assignment, I chose which environments I would i-insert into
before I inserted an i, but below is another formalization that
works:
i->0 \# s_k, s_p, s_t, s_k, š_k, š_p, š_t, š_k, n_g
-
y \# i _ e, i _ a, i _ o
NOTE: Some scholars classify Ojibwe into completely different languages,
which is why the ISO 639-3 for Ojibwe also includes ciw (Chippewa),
ojs (Severn Ojibwe), alq (Algonquin), otw (Ottowa), ojb
(Northwestern Ojibwe) and others