User:Jomeara421/Ottawa Bits and Pieces

Ottawa and Potawatomi

Ojibwe and Potawatomi are viewed as being more closely related to each than to other Algonquian languages, suggesting that they form a genetic subgroup within Proto-Algonquian, although the required research to ascertain the linguistic history and status of a hypothetical “Ojibwe-Potawatomi” subgroup has not yet been undertaken: "Ojibwe-Potawatomi is another possibility that awaits investigation." One classification of Algonquian languages treats Ojibwe and Potawatomi as "Ojibweyan" but does not provide any justification.

The Central languages share a significant number of common features. These features can generally attributed to diffusion of features through borrowing: “Extensive lexical, phonological, and perhaps grammatical borrowing—the diffusion of elements and features across language boundaries—appears to have been the major factor in giving the languages in the area of the Upper Great Lakes their generally similar cast, and it has not been possible to find any shared innovations substantial enough to require the postulation of a genetically distinct Central Algonquian subgroup.” The possibility that the proposed genetic subgrouping of Ojibwa and Potawatomi can also be accounted for as diffusion has also been raised: “The putative Ojibwa-Potawatomi subgroup is similarly open to question, but cannot be evaluated with more information on Potawatomi dialects.”

Ottawa oral literature

Main article: Ottawa texts and oral literature

Traditional Ottawa stories fall into two general categories, aasookaan 'legend, sacred story' (plural aasookaanag) and dbaajmowin 'narrative, story' (plural dbaajmownan). Stories in the aasookaan category involve mythical characters such as Nenbozh. Stories in the dbaajmowin category include traditional stories that do not necessarily involve mythical characters, with the same term also used more generally to refer to any type of story not in the aasookaan category. Published Ottawa text material includes a range of genres, including historical narratives, stories of conflict with other indigenous groups, humorous stories, and others.

References

• Fox, Francis and Nora Soney with Richard Rhodes. 1988. "Chippewa-Ottawa texts." John Nichols, ed., An Ojibwe text anthology, 33-68. London: The Centre for Teaching and Research of Canadian Native Languages, University of Western Ontario. ISBN 0-7714-1046-8
• McGregor, Gregor with C. F. Voegelin. 1988. "Birch Island Texts." Edited by Leonard Bloomfield and John D. Nichols. John Nichols, ed., An Ojibwe text anthology, 107-194. London: The Centre for Teaching and Research of Canadian Native Languages, University of Western Ontario. ISBN 0-7714-1046-8
• Nichols, John D. and Leonard Bloomfield, eds. 1991. The dog’s children. Anishinaabe texts told by Angeline Williams. Winnipeg: Publications of the Algonquian Text Society, University of Manitoba. ISBN 0-88755-148-3
• Piggott, Glyne L., ed. 1985. Three stories from the Odawa language project. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Readers and Study Guides. Winnipeg: Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. ISSN 0711-382X
• Piggott, Glyne L., ed. 1985a. Stories of Sam Osawamick from the Odawa language project. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Readers and Study Guides. Winnipeg: Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. ISSN 0711-382X
• Wilder, Julie, ed. 1999. Wiigwaaskingaa / Land of birch trees: Ojibwe stories by Arthur J. McGregor. Ojibwe editor Mary E. Wemigwans. Hobbema, AB: Blue Moon Publishing. ISBN 0-9685103-0-2

Alg and Iroq Lgstics

• Piggott, Glyne L., ed. 1985. Three stories from the Odawa language project. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Readers and Study Guides. Winnipeg: Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. ISSN 0711-382X
• Piggott, Glyne L., ed. 1985. Stories of Sam Osawamick from the Odawa language project. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Readers and Study Guides. Winnipeg: Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. ISSN 0711-382X
• King, Alice and Jean Rogers. Ed. John Nichols 1985. The stories of Alice King of Parry Island. Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics, Readers and Study Guides. Winnipeg: Department of Native Studies, University of Manitoba. ISSN 0711-382X

Oklahoma

The descendants of migrant Ottawa speakers live in Kansas and Oklahoma; available information indicates only three elderly speakers in Oklahoma as of 2006.

References

• Status of Indian Languages in Oklahoma. Intertribal Wordpath Society. Retrieved April 6, 2009.

Misc Stuff

The Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma has three fluent speakers.

Blackbird

(for Writing system) Ottawa speaker Andrew Blackbird ("Mac-ke-te-be-nessy", ca. 1816-1908) wrote in English a history of his people, with an appended grammatical description of Ottawa and the closely related Chippewa (Southwestern Ojibwe) dialect, including translations of short religious texts.

Writing system piece

Some modern Ottawa authors avoid and criticize such standardized writing systems and prefer to write using a system that uses characters that are more oriented to English phonetics.

Population History

The Ojibwe-speaking peoples historically have been located in the circum-Great Lakes area. The arrival of European explorers, fur traders, and settlers set off a centripetal process in which Ojibwe groups moved out from their original homelands. The movement of Ojibwe speakers started in the seventeenth century, population movements impacting other groups as well. Many Ojibwe groups such as the Saulteaux on the Canadian Plains have expanded a considerable distance beyond their original homeland.

Classification

From Classification section:

The recognized dialects of Ojibwe are spoken in the region surrounding the Great Lakes, in Ontario, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, with other groups of speakers in southwestern Québec, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and a few communities in Alberta. While there is some variation in the classification of Ojibwe dialects, at a minimum the following are recognized, proceeding west to east: Western Ojibwe (Saulteaux), Southwestern Ojibwe (Chippewa), Northwestern Ojibwe, Severn Ojibwe (Oji-Cree), Ottawa, Eastern Ojibwe, and Algonquin. Based upon contemporary field research, Valentine (1994) also recognizes several other dialects: Berens Ojibwe in northwestern Ontario, which he distinguishes from Northwestern Ojibwe; Border Lakes, in the Lake of the Woods area; North of (Lake) Superior; and Nipissing. The latter two cover approximately the same territory as Central Ojibwa, which he does not recognize.

Valentine has proposed that Ojibwe dialects are divided into three groups: a northern tier consisting of Severn Ojibwe and Algonquin; a southern tier consisting of “Odawa, Chippewa, Eastern Ojibwe, the Ojibwe of the Border Lakes region between Minnesota and Ontario, and Saulteaux; and third, a transitional zone between these two polar groups, in which there is a mixture of northern and southern features.”

Proto-Algonquian is the reconstructed ancestor language from which the daughter languages descend. The consensus view of the history of the Algonquian family is that there is one recognized genetic subgroup, Eastern Algonquian, from which approximately seventeen Eastern Algonquian languages descend, and that the remaining Algonquian languages descend directly from Proto-Algonquian.

Prefix restructuring

In other forms the third-person prefix is either completely missing, as in (a-c) below, or is realized only as the segment /d/ (examples d-g). For convenience the person prefix is written in bold in the table below.

Third-person possessor forms in Ottawa

English	Unpossessed nouns	Third-person possessor
(a) shoe	mkizin	makzin
(b) mitten	mjikaawan	mijkaawanan
(c) boat	jiimaan	jiimaan
(d) paddle	bwi	dabwi
(e) pipe	pwaagan	doopwaagnan
(f) snowshoe	aagam	daagman
(g) spoon	emkwaan	demkwaan

Other innovating person prefixes have arisen by the same process of reinterpreting stems that historically begin with a vowel as consonant-initial. Stems that historically begin with /i-/ or /a-/ have led to the development of reanalyzed prefixes containing these vowels.

Possessive forms of noun

English	Ottawa singular	Old form his/her X…	Reanalysed form his/her X…
(a) seat	pabwin	odapabiwin	da-pabwin
(b) work	nokiiwin	odanokiiwin	da-nokiiwin
(c) word	kidwin	odikidowin	di-kidwin
(d) match	shkodens	odishkodens	di-shkodens

The person prefixes can then have the forms (a) ‘first person’: /n-/ or /nd-/ (the unreanalysed forms), /ndoo-/, /ndi-/, /nda-/; (b) ‘second person’: /g-/ or /gd-/ (the unreanalysed forms), /gdoo-/, /gdi-/, /gda-/; (c) /d-/ (the unreanalysed form), /doo-/, /di-/, /da-/. There is considerable inter-speaker variation in patterns of usage, with some speakers using the reanalyzed prefixes either sparingly, or not at all; other speakers using the reanalyzed prefixes only before stems that originally had a short vowel in their first syllable; and speakers who use the reanalyzed prefixes with stems that had a long vowel in their first syllable.