Western Ojibwa (also known as Nakawēmowin (ᓇᐦᑲᐌᒧᐎᓐ), ''Saulteaux'', and ''Plains Ojibwa'') is a
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
of the
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also known as Ojibwa , Ojibway, Otchipwe,R. R. Bishop Baraga, 1878''A Theoretical and Practical Grammar of the Otchipwe Language''/ref> Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian lan ...
, a member of the
Algonquian language family. It is spoken by the
Saulteaux
The Saulteaux (pronounced , or in imitation of the French pronunciation , also written Salteaux, Saulteau and other variants), otherwise known as the Plains Ojibwe, are a First Nations band government in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, A ...
, a subnation of the
Ojibwe
The Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Chippewa, or Saulteaux are an Anishinaabe people in what is currently southern Canada, the northern Midwestern United States, and Northern Plains.
According to the U.S. census, in the United States Ojibwe people are one of ...
people, in southern
Manitoba
, image_map = Manitoba in Canada 2.svg
, map_alt = Map showing Manitoba's location in the centre of Southern Canada
, Label_map = yes
, coordinates =
, capital = Winn ...
and southern
Saskatchewan
Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a province in western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on the south by the U.S. states of Montana and North Dak ...
,
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, west of Lake Winnipeg. ''Saulteaux'' is generally used by its speakers, and ''Nakawēmowin'' is the general term in the language itself.
Classification
Genetically, Ojibwa is part of the Algonquian language family. This language family includes languages like
Mi'kmaq
The Mi'kmaq (also ''Mi'gmaq'', ''Lnu'', ''Miꞌkmaw'' or ''Miꞌgmaw''; ; ) are a First Nations people of the Northeastern Woodlands, indigenous to the areas of Canada's Atlantic Provinces and the Gaspé Peninsula of Quebec as well as the nort ...
,
Abenaki
The Abenaki ( Abenaki: ''Wαpánahki'') are an Indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands of Canada and the United States. They are an Algonquian-speaking people and part of the Wabanaki Confederacy. The Eastern Abenaki language was pre ...
,
Malecite
The Wəlastəkwewiyik, or Maliseet (, also spelled Malecite), are an Algonquian-speaking First Nation of the Wabanaki Confederacy. They are the indigenous people of the Wolastoq ( Saint John River) valley and its tributaries. Their territory ...
,
Potawatomi,
Delaware
Delaware ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Maryland to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and New Jersey and the Atlantic Ocean to its east. The state takes its name from the adjacent Del ...
,
Montagnais-Naskapi,
Cree, and
Blackfoot in Canada.
In the U.S., are languages such as
Menomini,
Fox
Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush'').
Twelve sp ...
,
Shawnee
The Shawnee are an Algonquian-speaking indigenous people of the Northeastern Woodlands. In the 17th century they lived in Pennsylvania, and in the 18th century they were in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, with some bands in Kentucky a ...
and
Cheyenne
The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enr ...
.
Yurok
The Yurok (Karuk language: Yurúkvaarar / Yuru Kyara - "downriver Indian; i.e. Yurok Indian") are an Indigenous people from along the Klamath River and Pacific coast, whose homelands are located in present-day California stretching from Trinidad ...
and
Wiyot
The Wiyot ( Wiyot: Wíyot, Chetco-Tolowa: Wee-’at xee-she or Wee-yan’ Xee-she’, Euchre Creek Tututni: Wii-yat-dv-ne - "Mad River People“, Yurok: Weyet) are an indigenous people of California living near Humboldt Bay, California and a s ...
, also known as the Ritwan languages in old literature, that were once spoken in California are also relatives with Algonquian language family. Despite the geographic distance, these two languages make part of the Algic language family with the Algonquian languages.
Randolph Valentine (2000) divides Ojibwa into two major dialect groups: a southern group and a northern group. The southern dialect group includes Saulteaux in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan;
Ojibwa in most of Ontario, Manitoulin Island and Georgian Bay;
Ottawa or Odawa in southern Ontario; and finally
Chippewa in North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The northern dialect group includes
Oji-Cree
The Oji-Cree are a First Nation in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba, residing in a narrow band extending from the Missinaibi River region in Northeastern Ontario at the east to Lake Winnipeg at the west.
The Oji-Cree people are d ...
in northern Ontario and
Algonquin
Algonquin or Algonquian—and the variation Algonki(a)n—may refer to:
Languages and peoples
*Algonquian languages, a large subfamily of Native American languages in a wide swath of eastern North America from Canada to Virginia
**Algonquin la ...
in Western Quebec.
[Logan, Harold J.. 2001. ''A Collection of Saulteaux Texts with Translations and Linguistic Analyses.'' MA Thesis, University of Regina.][Valentine, J. Randolph, 1994]
Leonard Bloomfield
Leonard Bloomfield (April 1, 1887 – April 18, 1949) was an American linguist who led the development of structural linguistics in the United States during the 1930s and the 1940s. He is considered to be the father of American distributionalis ...
(1946) was able to reconstruct the phonology system and some of the morphology of Proto-Algonquian through the comparison of cognates from four languages: Fox, Cree, Menomini, and Ojibwa.
Fig. 0.1 Proto-Algonquian Reconstructions made by Bloomfield (1946)
Fig. 0.2 Comparison of Central Ojibwa (Odawa), Western Ojibwa (Saulteaux), and Swampy Cree (2002)
History
In comparison to other eastern tribes, the Ojibwa have suffered the least population loss at the time of European contact. With the number of their peoples and early acquisition of rifles, the Ojibwa were a powerful political force during the early period of the fur trade.
It was common for small groups to go onto the Plains to exploit the hunt and then return to the Woodland area. They would hunt moose, elk, and other forest game. As a result, they gradually advanced north and west from their Red River base, following the forest edge. The bison hunt also became incorporated into the cycle of seasonal exploitation for many of the Ojibwa family groups.
The small groups of Plains Ojibwa are called the Saulteaux. This name derives from French and refers to those that gathered around the falls – specifically the Sault Ste. Marie area of modern Ontario and Michigan. They defeated the Cheyenne in the 1700s and occupied southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan when the fur trade died out. They were entrenched as a plains Indian group with the signing of the Number Treaties in the 1870s.
[ cott, Mary Ellen et al.1995. ''The Saulteaux Language Dictionary.'' Kinistin First Nation and Duval House Publishing.]
Neither Western Ojibwa or any dialect of the Ojibwa has official status in North America.
Geographic distribution
The Ojibwa-speaking regions are found mainly to the south of Cree-speaking regions in Canada.
The exact number of current Saulteaux dialect speakers is unknown. However, there are several
Saulteaux communities found in southern Manitoba and southern Saskatchewan.
Phonology
Saulteaux has twenty-four phonemic segments – seventeen consonants and seven vowels.
Consonants
The consonants are four
resonants
In phonetics and phonology, a sonorant or resonant is a speech sound that is produced with continuous, non-turbulent airflow in the vocal tract; these are the manners of articulation that are most often voiced in the world's languages. Vowels ar ...
and thirteen
obstruents
An obstruent () is a speech sound such as , , or that is formed by ''obstructing'' airflow. Obstruents contrast with sonorants, which have no such obstruction and so resonate. All obstruents are consonants, but sonorants include vowels as well a ...
. The resonant nasals are labial /m/ and alveolar /n/. The resonant
glides are labio-velar /w/ and
palatal
The palate () is the roof of the mouth in humans and other mammals. It separates the oral cavity from the nasal cavity.
A similar structure is found in crocodilians, but in most other tetrapods, the oral and nasal cavities are not truly separ ...
/y/. Western Ojibwa has the
glottal stop /ʔ/, not /h/.
Fig. 1.1 Obstruents in Western Ojibwa
Vowels
The vowels are divided into three
short vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
and four
long vowels
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...
.
Fig. 1.2 Short vowels in Western Ojibwa
Fig. 1.3 Long vowels in Western Ojibwa
''N.B. - circumflexes/macrons over vowels mark length: /î/ = /ii/.
''
Western Ojibwa is non-syncopating which means that weak vowels are not deleted according to metrical position.
Short vowels are treated different in the Ojibwa dialects. In Saulteaux, tensing does not occur with initial short vowels. They also do not shift to /a/.
Nasal vowels are becoming denasalized; however, vowels may be nasalized before a nasal followed by a sibilant, i.e. in the phonotactically permissible sequences /ns/, /nz/, and /nzh/.
After a long vowel and before s or ʃ, /n/ is not pronounced the same as elsewhere, instead the preceding vowel is given a nasalized sound.
Other phonological properties of Western Ojibwa
''As found on Valentine (1994):
''
* t-Epenthesis: a /t/ is inserted between the personal prefix and the vowel when a stem is vowel-initial. This is marked by (t) in texts. For example, ''ni(t)-anohkî'' 'I work'.
* y-Epenthesis: a /y/ can be inserted between two long vowels to maintain the phonotactic constraint that vowels do not occur next to each other in Saulteaux. When reduplication occurs on a vowel-initial root a /y/ is inserted. This is marked by (y) in texts. Preroots ending in vowels that come before vowel-initial roots also receive this epenthesis. For example, ''ni-kî(y)-ayâmin'' 'we had it, we were there' and ''a(y)-api'' '(s)he sits for a long time'.
* Glide elision: If a word that ends with a /w/ has no suffixation, then the /w/ will be elided. The glides (w,y) are optionally elided in many cases, especially in casual speech. The negative particle ''kâwin'' usually occurs without the /w/ in casual speech.
* Nasal assimilation: The nasals will assimilate to the following consonant of a cluster. So:
** /n/ →
/ __p : /n/ is realized as labial nasal
when it occurs before a labial stop /p/
** /n/ →
/ __k : /n/ is realized as velar nasal
when it occurs before a velar stop /k/.
** (nk, ng) →
/ __# : /n/ is realized as
when it occurs at the end of the word.
* /ng/ simplied to the velar nasal
'': this is scattered among the Saulteaux communities – in general it is a southern phenomenon and most prevalent in the southeast.
* ʃ > s: limited to Saulteaux, where the palatal and dental fricatives are common in some communities. This is not just a process of one sound assimilating to the other but both are heard. The occurrence of sibilants on the prairies is possibly coming from Plain Crees, which has only /s/.
* s > ʃ: this feature is restricted to Saulteaux, probably under the influence of Plains Cree which has no /ʃ/.
* /wa/ maybe /o/ initially: this occurs in many Saulteaux communities for example the word "muskrat" may be variably represented as wazhashk or ozhashk.
* Quality of /aa/ is not realized with rounding like in some dialects.
* iwa-stems do not restructure to
i
* In some dialects, wiiwi > oo which is
:where basically /ii/ assimilates with the roundness of the w, and the resulting string is simplified to
: This does not happen in Western Ojibwa.
* The quality of /oo/ in waabooz, "rabbit" is
* Nasal cluster simplification does not happen in this dialect.
Morphology
Typologically, Saulteaux is an
agglutinating
An agglutinative language is a type of synthetic language with morphology that primarily uses agglutination. Words may contain different morphemes to determine their meanings, but all of these morphemes (including stems and affixes) tend to remai ...
or
polysynthetic language
In linguistic typology, polysynthetic languages, formerly holophrastic languages, are highly synthetic languages, i.e. languages in which words are composed of many morphemes (word parts that have independent meaning but may or may not be able ...
which means that it relies heavily on affixation to express meaning. As is the case with languages that have active morphology, word order in this language is not as rigid as English.
Gender
There is no distinction between masculine and feminine – instead there is a distinction between items that are animate and those that are inanimate.
The animate category includes all human beings and animals, but in general not all other categories such as plants, body parts, utensils etc. are fully under the animate category. A restricted set of items that are neither human nor animal are still considered, for example rock, pipe, raspberries, pants, etc. Even across different Saulteaux dialects 'strawberry' fluctuates in its animacy. This may be related to the practice of a "Strawberry Dance" by certain communities. The gender of an entity is important because for many morphemes, the language uses gender-specific morphology that distinguishes the animate from the inanimate.
Animate examples
:
''Inini'' 'man'
''Sakimê'' 'mosquito'
''Asikan'' 'sock'
''Miskomin'' 'raspberry'
Inanimate examples
:
''Cîmân'' 'boat'
''Wâwan'' 'egg'
''Masinahikan'' 'book'
''Otêhimin'' 'strawberry'
Obviation
This is a
topic
Topic, topics, TOPIC, topical, or topicality may refer to:
Topic / Topics
* Topić, a Slavic surname
* ''Topics'' (Aristotle), a work by Aristotle
* Topic (chocolate bar), a brand of confectionery bar
* Topic (DJ), German musician
* Topic (g ...
strategy for showing prominence between third persons within a discourse environment. Within a predication one animate third person will be the
proximate and any other animate third persons will be obligatorily designated as the
obviative
Within linguistics, obviative (abbreviated ) third person is a grammatical-person clusivity marking that distinguishes a non- salient (obviative) third-person referent from a more salient (proximate) third-person referent in a given discourse cont ...
.
The suffix –''an'' is the obviative marker:
''Animohš owâpamân pôsînsan'' 'The dog (''animohš'') sees a cat (''pôsîns-an'')'
''Animohšan owâpamân pôsîns'' 'The cat (''pôsîns'') sees a dog (''animohš-an'')'
Ojibwa verbs also mark whether the action is direct or inverse. In the first two examples the action takes place directly, where the proximate is acting upon the obviative. This direction can be inverted meaning that the verb marks when the obviative is acting on the proximate by using the inverse morpheme –ikô-:
''Animohš owâpamikôn pôsînsan'' 'The dog (''animohš'') is seen by the cat (''pôsîns-an'')'
So the –''an'' morpheme is something entirely different from an
accusative
The accusative case (abbreviated ) of a noun is the grammatical case used to mark the direct object of a transitive verb.
In the English language, the only words that occur in the accusative case are pronouns: 'me,' 'him,' 'her,' 'us,' and ‘th ...
marker.
Person hierarchy
There is also a
person
A person ( : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of prope ...
hierarchy, as a result, showing the "preferred" person to use in Saulteaux discourse is the second person, followed by the first person, and finally the third person. The third person can show the proximate (the unmarked category), the obviative, the highly marked further obviative that is reserved for non-prominent third persons acting or being acted upon by the obviative.
Other morphological properties of Western Ojibwa
''As found on Valentine (1994):
''
* The suffix ''–ing'' is used as a
locative
* ''-(n)s'' : most Ojibwa dialects form the diminutive by adding the suffix –Vns where V, the vowel, is realized as /e/ unless attached to a noun stem ending with a glide. When there is a glide, like j or w, the suffix takes on the backness and rounding features of the glide. For example, ''jiimaanens'', "small boat" (stem jiimaan), ''mitigoons'', "small tree" (mitigw), ''asabiins'' "small net" (stem asaby).
* Saulteaux Ojibwa does not have a suffix for inanimate obviative
* Inanimate plural suffix is realized as ''–an''
* There are a number of Saulteaux communities that use the suffix ''–an'' while others use the suffix ''–anini'' for obviative possessor of animate
* For animate obviative plural, many communities do not distinguish between singular and plural in the animate obviative.
* There is no final ''–ii'' in nouns with a Cy stem
* The demonstrative for animate singular proximal ''waha(we)'' is used. The reduced form ''awe'' is much more common.
* First person plural exclusive 'we' is ''niinawi(n)d''
* Indefinite animate singular 'someone' is ''awi(i)ya''. However, the Saulteaux speakers may say it in a plural context. So either ''awiiyag'' (which is the plural form) or ''awiya''.
* ''Gegoo'' is indefinite inanimate singular 'something'.
* ''Awenen'' is the animate singular interrogative pronoun 'who'used by the Manitoba Saulteaux speakers while is used by the extreme west of Saulteaux.
* ''Aanapii'' is the interrogative particle 'when'.
* ''Aa(n)di'' is the interrogative particle 'where'.
* ''Aaniin'' is the interrogative particle 'how'.
* ''Ninoonde-'' seems to be outstripping ''niwii-'' as the voluntative preverb within the Saulteaux communities, especially speakers surveyed west of central Manitoba.
* A number of western Saulteaux communities use ''onji-'' as a negative past preverb. This is found common in areas adjacent to or bilingual with Cree, which uses the
cognate ''ohci-''.
* Northern Manitoba Saulteaux have ''e-gii''- as a complementizer preverb while communities in the south have ''gii-.''
Syntax
Saulteaux is a
non-configurational language
In generative grammar, non-configurational languages are languages characterized by a flat phrase structure, which allows syntactically discontinuous expressions, and a relatively free word order.
History of the concept of "non-configurationality" ...
which means that it has free word order. A fully inflected verb constitutes a sentence or clause on its own with the subject, object, aspect and other notions expressed through the verbal morphology. The language dialect uses
pronominals to express the
arguments
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
of the verb and any overt nouns (or
determiner phrase In linguistics, a determiner phrase (DP) is a type of phrase headed by a determiner such as ''many''. Controversially, many approaches, take a phrase like ''not very many apples'' to be a DP, headed, in this case, by the determiner ''many''. This i ...
s (DPs)) that further refer to these entities are just
adjuncts of the verb. The overt DPs are actually not necessary as they just repeat information and relationships already marked on the verb. As a result, the occurrence of DPs referring to the arguments of verbs is optional and often left out.
Joe ''ominwênimân'' Mary''an'' 'Joe ((s)he like her/him) Mary'
The thematic information is applied verb-internally and not at the sentence level and so the
affixes and
clitics are
arguments
An argument is a statement or group of statements called premises intended to determine the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called conclusion. Arguments can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectic ...
. The verb ''ominwênimân'' by itself already shows that someone likes another person. The verb is from the third person set of the
VTA (transitive animate verb) order and is inflected for a direct action. We can see that the proximate is acting on the obviative as Joe is not marked and Mary is marked with the obviative marker –''an''.
Saulteaux's word order, however, would be better described as VO(S) to show the rare appearance of an overt subject, but that it does occur finally most often when it does appear.
Writing system
Ojibwa has a literary history that needs to be acknowledged. The language is written using the
Standard Roman Orthography (SRO). Some people use double vowels to represent long vowels while others lengthen the vowels by adding either a macron accent (^) (â, ê, î, ô, û) or acute accent (´) (á,é, í, ó, ú).
Common phrases
Some common phrases found i
Aboriginal Language of Manitoba Inc.website
Notable researchers
Some notable researchers who documented the Ojibwa dialect are:
* Terry J. Klokeid
* Harold J. Logan
* James H. Howard
* Paul Voorhis
* J. Randolph Valentine
Notes
See also
*
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages ( or ; also Algonkian) are a subfamily of indigenous American languages that include most languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically simi ...
*
Ojibwe language
Ojibwe , also known as Ojibwa , Ojibway, Otchipwe,R. R. Bishop Baraga, 1878''A Theoretical and Practical Grammar of the Otchipwe Language''/ref> Ojibwemowin, or Anishinaabemowin, is an indigenous language of North America of the Algonquian lan ...
*
Ojibwe dialects
The Ojibwe language is spoken in a series of dialects occupying adjacent territories, forming a language complex in which mutual intelligibility between adjacent dialects may be comparatively high but declines between some non-adjacent dialects. ...
References
* Cote, Margaret. 1984. ''Nahkawēwin: Saulteaux (Ojibway dialect of the Plains).'' Regina SK: Saskatchewan Indian Federated College.
* Cote, Margaret and Terry J. Klokeid. 1985. ''Saulteaux verb book.'' Regina, SK: Saskatchewan Indian Federated College.
* Logan, Harold J.. 2001. ''A Collection of Saulteaux Texts with Translations and Linguistic Analyses.'' MA Thesis, University of Regina.
*
cott, Mary Ellen et al.1995. ''The Saulteaux Language Dictionary.'' Kinistin First Nation and Duval House Publishing. {{ISBN, 1-895850-51-7
* Valentine, J. Randolph. 1994. ''Ojibwe dialect relationships''. PhD dissertation, University of Texas, Austin.
* Voorhis, Paul. 1976. ''A Saulteaux (Ojibwe) phrase book based on the dialects of Manitoba.'' Brandon, MB: Department of Native Studies, Brandon University.
External links
Our Languages: Nakawē(Saskatchewan Indian Cultural Centre)
OLAC resources in and about the Western Ojibwa language
Ojibwe culture
Central Algonquian languages
Ojibwa language, Eastern
Indigenous languages of the North American Plains
First Nations languages in Canada
Culture of Manitoba
Culture of Saskatchewan