Topics in Potawatomi Grammar
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Topics in Potawatomi Grammar TOPICS IN POTAWATOMI GRAMMAR home | reference | PLSC | forum 1. Introduction to the Potawatomi Language 2. The Sounds of Potawatomi 3. Writing Systems 4. Sound Rules 5. Grammatical Categories 6. Parts of Speech 7. Introduction to Word Structure [more on this subject soon] 8. The Inflection of Nouns 9. The Inflection of Verbs 10 Introduction to Sentence Structure [more on this subject soon] 11. Adverbial Clauses 12. Complement Clauses 13. Relative Clauses [more on this subject soon] 14. Conjunction [more on this subject soon] 15. Disjunction [more on this subject soon] 16. Adversatives Verb Paradigm Charts A Note on Paradigms and Attrition file:///D|/My%20Documents/anishinaabe/TRIBES/languages/potawatomi/grammartopics.html2007.01.26. 23:36:54 Introduction 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE POTAWATOMI LANGUAGE home | reference | PLSC | forum | grammar topics 1. Communities of Speakers 2. Dialects 3. Potawatomi an Endangered Language 4. Language Families and the Algonquian Language Family 5. Language Family Trees 6. Some Distinctive Features of Potawatomi Grammar 6.1. Animacy 6.2. Preference for Verbal Constructions 6.3. Inflections vs. Pronouns 6.4. Word-Building 6.5. Word Order 6.6. Linguistic Research 1. COMMUNITIES OF SPEAKERS [top] Neshnabémwen, commonly known as Potawatomi, is the heritage language of the Bodéwadmik, or Potawatomi people. In the early 1800's, the Potawatomi area extended over a large territory centered around Lake Michigan. After removal, the tribes were dispersed over much of the midwest of the United States and adjacent Ontario in Canada. In the United States there are six federally recognized Potawatomi Tribes: the Forest County Potawatomis in Wisconsin, Hannahville Indian Community in northern Michigan, the Huron Band Potawatomis in southwestern Michigan, the Pokagon Band Potawatomis (which are also in southwestern Michigan but also extend to northwestern Indiana) the Prairie Band Potawatomis in Kansas, and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma. There are fluent speakers of Potawatomi in nearly every one of the U.S. communies. The largest communities of speakers are among the Forest County Potawatomis of Wisconsin and the Prairie Band Potawatomis of Kansas. In Ontario, there are people of Potawatomi heritage in the First Nations reserves adjacent to Lake Huron and Georgian Bay. Over the generations, most of the Potawatomis in Ontario switched to the local Ottawa dialect. However, there are some who retained Potawatomi. [Insert Map] file:///D|/My%20Documents/anishinaabe/TRIBES/languages/potawatomi/introtogrammar.html (1 of 9)2007.01.26. 23:36:55 Introduction 2. DIALECTS [top] Although each Potawatomi community can be characterized as having a slightly different dialect, there is a much more noticable difference between the Prairie Band dialect and all of the northern dialects. For the purposes of these notes, we will call Prairie Band Potawatomi 'Southern' Potawatomi, and group all of the other dialects into 'Northern' Potawatomi (because there are no known fluent speakers of Citizen Band Potawatomi, we are unable to say whether Citizen Band speakers had a very different dialect or not). There is a larger amount of different vocabulary between Northern and Southern Potawatomi than between any of the Northern groups. Also, Southern Potawatomi has a characteristic pronunciation. When you need to be aware of differences, you will see a (N) for the Northern dialect and (S) for the Southern dialect. Most of the examples will come from the Northern dialect. 3. POTAWATOMI AN ENDANGERED LANGUAGE [top] An endangered language is one which is still spoken, but is not acquiring native speakers. To be a native language, a language must be acquired at a very early age, particularly as a first language. Adults may learn to speak a second language very well, but will never have the complete fluency of a native speaker. If a language does not acquire new native speakers it will become extinct. As many as 50% of the languages of the world are in danger of becoming extinct, due to the spread of large economies and global languages. The problem is particularly severe in Native America, where 80% are expected to become extinct within the next few decades. Potawatomi is one of these languages. The 1996 Potawatomi Language Institute estimated that there are only about 50 fluent speakers left of Potawatomi. These speakers are mostly elderly. At the same time there are no children being raised to speak Potawatomi as a first language. If this situation continues, Potawatomi will be lost as a spoken language within a few decades. This grammar is part of a larger effort to document and pass on this language to the children of today's speakers. 4. LANGUAGE FAMILIES AND THE ALGONQUIAN LANGUAGE FAMILY [top] Potawatomi belongs to a vast group of languages known as the Algonquian language family. file:///D|/My%20Documents/anishinaabe/TRIBES/languages/potawatomi/introtogrammar.html (2 of 9)2007.01.26. 23:36:55 Introduction Algonquian languages stretch from the Maritimes in Canada, down the East Coast of the United States, and west into the Plains. There are even two languages in California (Yurok andWiyot, which is no longer spoken) that have a close relationship to Algonquian languages. These are known as Ritwan languages. [Insert Map] The Algonquian language family, in turn, is one of many language families in North America. Linguistically, languages that belong to different families have little in common. The difference between two Algonquian languages such as Potawatomi and Menomini might be considered to be like that of English and German, which both belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European Language Family. A Potawatomi speaker and a speaker of a Siouan language like Winnebago would have about as much difficulty understanding each other as speakers of English and Japanese! Linguists are able to determine linguistic relationships by establishing regular correspondences between sounds in different languages. This is known as the comparative method, and can be used to determine relationships up to about 5000 years time depth. Let us examine some comparisons between the "Ojibwe" languages. Look at Figure 3: English Gloss Potawatomi Ottawa Minnesota Ojibwe man nene nini inini pot, kettle kek kik akik it's raining gmewen (S) gmeya (N) gmiwan gimiwan my son ngwes ngwis ingwizis/ingos fire shkodé shkode ishkode my eye nshkizhek nshkiinzhig nishkiinzhig fly ojés oojii, oojiins oojii, oojiins Ojibwe Language Cognates One of the first things you will see is that there are an overwhelming number of similarities between these languages. Even a casual look comparing the dictionaries of these languages would indicate they are related to each other. Now look at some of the differences. Where Minnesota Ojibwe words begin with a short vowel (short vowels are written singly in Ottawa and Ojibwe, except for e), the corresponding Potawatomi and Ottawa words do not. The vowels are also different. Potawatomi has e where the others have i or a. Also there are sequences of a vowel followed by n that are in Ottawa and Ojibwe but are absent from Potawatomi. These are some of the differences that may be found throughout the vocabularies of these languages. The similarities and differences show a how these languages originated from a common "ancestor" language, and then changed over time to what we see today. The Ojibwe languages diverged from each other fairly recently, linguistically speaking; 500 or so years file:///D|/My%20Documents/anishinaabe/TRIBES/languages/potawatomi/introtogrammar.html (3 of 9)2007.01.26. 23:36:55 Introduction ago. The comparative method may also be applied to languages which on the surface appear to be very different. Linguists look for comparisons in core vocabulary, such as kinship terms, body part terms and words that tend to be cross-linguistically resistant to borrowing and change. The Ritwan-Algonquian relationship (which is probably over 5000 years old) was established by finding regular sound correspondences between a fairly small set of core vocabulary. 5. LANGUAGE FAMILY TREES [top] One way to look at relationships among languages is with a language family tree. The end of the branches represent languages that are spoken now, or are attested by written records. Each large dot represents a hypothetical language that was the parent of each of the languages below it. Such a parent language is known as a "proto-language." Some proto-languages have been given names by linguists studying them, such as Proto-Algonquian, or Proto-Western-Algonquian. Sometimes for ease of reference, linguists refer to a parent language by naming it after one of the daughter languages. So the parent language of Southwestern Ojibwe, Ottawa, etc. is sometimes refered to as "Proto-Ojibwe." [insert diagram] By studying this family tree, you can see that at an early point, Proto-Algonquian split into two groups, a Western group and an Eastern group. Current thought in Algonquian studies favors that the next split was Blackfoot, followed by Arapaho and Cree. Then came Cheyenne and Menomini, then Shawnee and the closely related languages Fox, Sauk and Kickapoo. The Miami split off next, followed by Potawatomi, which is differentiated from the other Ojibwe dialects. There are several things a family tree like that in Figure 4 cannot tell us. Although it shows the sequence of these splits, it does not tell us the relative time depth of each split. For example, because of the similarity of the Eastern Algonquian languages, their differentiation presumably took place much more recently than the split between Blackfoot and the rest of the Western Algonquian languages. The family tree model also does not show later contact between languages. This is important because such contact can result in language change. For example, although Cree and Ojibwe split from each other early on, they had more recent contact which resulted in borrowed vocabulary. Also although Potawatomi is more closely related to Ojibwe, there were more recent influences from Fox, again resulting shared features and vocabulary (not to mention borrowings that have resulted from contact languages such as French and English).