University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations Dissertations and Theses December 2020 Person-based Prominence in Ojibwe Christopher Hammerly University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2 Part of the Cognitive Psychology Commons, Language Description and Documentation Commons, Morphology Commons, Psycholinguistics and Neurolinguistics Commons, Syntax Commons, and the Typological Linguistics and Linguistic Diversity Commons Recommended Citation Hammerly, Christopher, "Person-based Prominence in Ojibwe" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations. 2024. https://doi.org/10.7275/18867536 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2024 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PERSON-BASED PROMINENCE IN OJIBWE A Dissertation Presented by CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS HAMMERLY Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September 2020 Linguistics © Copyright by Christopher M. Hammerly 2020 All Rights Reserved PERSON-BASED PROMINENCE IN OJIBWE A Dissertation Presented by CHRISTOPHER MATHIAS HAMMERLY Approved as to style and content by: Brian Dillon, Chair Rajesh Bhatt, Member Adrian Staub, Member Joe Pater, Department Chair Department of Linguistics For the Anishinaabeg of Nigigoonsiminikaaning and Seine River “How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.” — David Foster Wallace, The Pale King ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This thesis is at once a beginning and an end. It is the beginning of what I hope to be a lifetime of work on obviation, agreement, and my ancestral language Ojibwe; and the end of what I have figured out so far. It is the end of five incredible years of graduate studies at UMass; and the beginning of the relationships that I have built over the past half-decade. I am most deeply indebted to the Anishinaabe communities at Nigigoonsiminikaan- ing and Seine River in Ontario, especially those who participated in this study. Gi- miigwechiwi’ininim. Nancy Jones is a keeper of endless knowledge and experience, and I am so lucky that she has been willing to take me in and share it. Not only has she made this dissertation possible, she has made it possible for me to reconnect to my own roots. Don Jones and Andrew Johnson both gave their time, energy, and patience to make the experimental portion of this thesis possible, and by providing additional judgments and feedback. I am endlessly grateful for their assistance and kindness. Finally, thanks to Elijah Forbes for the amazing drawings, which were done on an insanely tight timeline. My committee, Brian Dillon, Rajesh Bhatt, and Adrian Staub were patient, encour- aging, supportive, and engaged. It is difficult to find words to describe my experience. They were everything that I needed exactly when I needed it. This project came with its fair share of frustrations, and I am beyond grateful for their mentorship and advising. Brian believed that I could do the hard thing. He gently made sure I pushed myself to the next level and never let me fall. He was calm and measured when my brain was on fire with worry and doubt. From the moment I stepped onto Western Mass soil, we vi have had meetings nearly every single week — an absolute testament to his devotion as an advisor. Brian’s way of approaching the science of language by combining lin- guistic theory, statistics, computational modeling, and psycholinguistics has formed the bedrock of my thinking. Rajesh should probably have been a co-chair on this dissertation. He was the pri- mary advisor for everything syntax, and I am so thankful for the huge amount of time he spent reading, commenting, and discussing the many drafts of this manuscript. His guidance is all over Chapters 2–5, and I would have never been able to get as deep as I did without his support. Rajesh has unending enthusiasm for every single idea. His willingness to take my half-baked thoughts seriously, and then help me turn them into something properly rigorous and formal, is something that I am endlessly grateful for. Adrian has given me license to be intelligently subversive, as long as the evidence and arguments are on my side. I will miss walking into his office, discussing the latest New York Times article, then diving into the fine details of experimental methods and analysis. I probably should have taken more advantage of his expertise than I did over the past year. But Adrian has forever shaped the way I collect and evaluate behavioral evidence, and this project would not have been successful without his critical input at every point. I kept my committee slim, but both Ellen Woolford and Kyle Johnson were instru- mental in getting the work in Chapter 5 off the ground by advising my second generals paper on word order in Ojibwe. Ellen taught me how to write like a syntactician with- out being (I hope) entirely impenetrable. To me, Kyle is like Socrates, for lack of a less fawning comparison. He has been both a professional and personal mentor, and I will miss hearing his laugh from down the hall. There are many more professors at UMass to thank — nearly everyone in the department has influenced me in one way or another, which is what attracted me to UMass in the first place. To Lyn Frazier for her always incisive and constructive feedback. To Barbara Partee for a comment about first person vii plurals in my third year that sowed the seed for this thesis (and for taking care of my cat Nogi during one summer when I was away doing fieldwork!). To John Kingston and Gaja Jarosz for the many evenings of belaying. To Shota Momma for help with a production study that didn’t quite pan out, but I still hope to run. To Andrew Cohen in psychology for much statistical guidance and feedback over the years. To Chuck Clifton for his wealth of knowledge that seems to span every moment following the cognitive revolution. One of the best parts about UMass are the fellow graduate students. Alex Göbel has been my cohort-mate, office-mate, climbing partner, collaborator, and friend all rolled into one. His companionship has been a presence from my first prospective weekend to our last day in Northampton as graduate students. Rodica Ivan is an absolute saint. She makes sure that I have the opportunity to “be bad”, stores a wealth of knowledge and good advice, and was the first one to know that I had chosen UMass for graduate school. Kaden Holladay is one of the kindest people I have ever met. I owe him many debts for house/cat-sitting, rides home, and great conversations. I have been lucky to have a great cohort in Carolyn Anderson, Alex Göbel, Jaieun Kim, Brandon Prickett, Michael Wilson, and Rong Yin. Trivia partners (though I have been woefully absent lately) in Mike Clauss, Erika Mayer, Andrew Lamont, Maggie Baird, Georgia Simon, Coral Hughto, Io Hughto, and others already named. There are so many people that deserve more than just a shout-out for their friendship and support, but that is how these things often go. Thanks to Stefan Keine (who also pro- vided helpful comments on early versions of the content in Chapters 4 and 5), Ethan Poole, Nick LaCara, Jyoti Iyet, Sakshi Bhatia, Alex Nazarov, Ivy Hauser, Leland Kusmer, Deniz Özyıldız, Amanda Rysling, Shayne Sloggett, Caroline Andrews, Petr Kusliy, Zahra Mirrazi, Anissa Neal, Max Nelson, Alex Nyman, Jonathan Pesetsky, Shay Hucklebridge, Duygu Goksu, Bethany Dickerson, Leah Chapman, Mariam Asatryan, Ria Geguera, John Burnsky, and Thuy Bui for fellowship and community. viii I also feel compelled to thank the land that UMass stands on and is surrounded by. I will miss being hemmed in by the mountains and the river. The early morning fog, and the immense snow storms. The roadside porcupines and bears. I’ve taken my bike all over the valley and hill towns, and I’ve found beauty, inspiration, solitude, and peace in nearly every peak and valley. The city of Northampton and the surrounding area has also been a great community to be a part of. I will miss the weirdos and radicals. Plus, I have been well fueled. Thanks to Familiars for the nitro coffee, The Dirty Truth for cheese sauce (and pretzels), Bistro Les Gras for burgers and wine, Green Room for cocktails, The Deuce and Quarters for beer and trivia, and Mission Cantina for burritos. Before UMass, I spent a year at the University of Maryland in the Baggett Fellowship. That opportunity was a major launching point, gave me confidence and independence as a researcher, and set me up for success. Thanks to Naomi Feldman, Omer Preminger, Ellen Lau, and William Matchin for mentorship that has extended beyond that single year. A very special thanks to my fellow Baggetts Tom Roberts, Julia Buffinton, and Natalia Lapinskaya for creating what will likely remain the best shared office I will ever inhabit. There were many wonderful graduate students at UMD: Kasia Hitczenko, Nick Huang, Lara Ehrenhofer, Allyson Ettinger, Anton Malko, Chris Heffner, Zoe Schlueter, Dustin Chacón, and Aaron Steven White all were very influential in getting me to this point. I also learned a ton in conversations and courses with Alexander Williams, Colin Phillips, Norbert Hornstein, and Howard Lasnik. All of this really started when I was an undergraduate at the University of Minnesota. My first ever research project was supervised by Kathryn Kohnert in a first-year seminar, and she got me hooked.