Making Statements in : A Survey of in Spontaneous Sentences

MICHAEL SULLIVAN University of

INTRODUCTION1

Languages of the Algonquian family are often referred to as having a rel- atively “free” word order (Bloomeld 1957:131; Dahlstrom 1991, 1995; Guile 2001; Valentine 2001:920; Branigan and McKenzie 2002; Shields 2004, among countless others). Any glance at a running narrative text will verify this generalization. Many studies of word order in Algonquian lan- guages suggest a correlation between varying constituent orders and dis- course-driven factors such as topic and focus (Dahlstrom 1995; Mühlbauer 2003; Junker 2004; Johnson et al. 2011). The majority of the previous studies however, have examined word order in textual materials, most often running narratives collected via dictation from as long as a century ago.2

1. Akawe niwii-miigwechiwi’aag agiw akiwenziiyag gaa-pi-wiidookawijig. Chi-miig- wech to Amikogaabaw (Larry Smallwood) of the Mille Lacs Band for his willingness to be my research subject, language consultant, teacher, and friend. All of the Ojibwe examples provided here (unless otherwise indicated) are of his construction. Also to John Nichols for bringing me aboard the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary Project which made this research possible. Chi-miigwech to audiences of the 44th Algonquian Conference, the Linguistics Colloquium at UMN, language tables at the Boise Forte Urban Ofce and Mille Lacs Band Urban Ofce both in Minneapolis, as well as Waadookodaading Immersion School. I’d specically like to thank Amy Dahlstrom, Hooi Ling Soh, Jea- nette Gundel, Claire Halpert, Paul Tilleson, Andrew Cowell, Margaret Noodin, Brendan Fairbanks, Chato Gonzalez, Dustin Burnette, Nora Livesay, and an anonymous reviewer for their numerous helpful and encouraging comments during presentations and over the development of this study. 2. Some syntactic studies in the Algonquian literature are concerned with data from over 300 years ago (see Richards 2004).

329 330 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

Due to their complex morphological systems, word order for is far from xed and nominal constituents can appear in an array of possible orders with respect to the . This is shown below where the rst sentence shown in (1) was the rst order offered, and represents the consultant’s preferred order for this construction.3

(1) O-bimidaabaan-aa-n iniw waawaashkeshi-wan a’aw giiwose-inini. 3-drag-DIR-3 DEM-OBV deer-OBV DEM hunter ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

(2) A’aw giiwose-inini o-bimidaabaan-aa-n iniw waawaashkeshi-wan. DEM hunter 3-drag-DIR-3 DEM-OBV deer-OBV ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

(3) Iniw waawaashkeshi-wan o-bimidaabaan-aa-n a’aw giiwose-inini. DEM-OBV deer-OBV 3-drag-DIR-3 DEM hunter ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

(4) O-bimidaabaan-aa-n a’aw giiwose-inini iniw waawaashkeshi-wan. 3-drag-DIR-3 DEM hunter DEM-OBV deer-OBV ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

Examples (2), (3), and (4) were perceived as normal with no apparent change in meaning while the examples provided below in (5) and (6) were deemed “acceptable” by the speaker with hesitation suggesting that having both arguments in preverbal position is dispreferred:

(5) A’aw giiwose-inini iniw waawaashkeshi-wan o-bimidaabaan-aa-n. DEM hunter DEM-OBV deer-OBV 3-drag-DIR-3 ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

(6) Iniw waawaashkeshi-wan a’aw giiwose-inini o-bimidaabaan-aa-n. DEM-OBV deer-OBV DEM hunter 3-drag-DIR-3 ‘The hunter is dragging the deer.’

3. Glossing conventions follow Leipzig format. The following are not included in Leipzig: 3P = third-person plural; 3 = third-person ; PEJ = pejorative; DIM = diminutive; OBV = obviative; DIR = direct action; INV= inverse action. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 331

The study presented here is the result of an experiment with an Ojibwe speaker of the Southwestern variety in an attempt to identify a preferred word order in spontaneous sentences. This variety of Ojibwe is extremely endangered in the United States and there is currently a tremendous effort underway to revitalize it with the emergence of immersion schools, pre- schools, and adult immersion programming.4 Ojibwe is offered as a course in many colleges and universities throughout the Southwestern area and in many reservation schools as well as public schools in close proxim- ity to reservation areas. There appears to be a prevalent assumption in the majority of Ojibwe classrooms (both collegiate and K–12 settings) that word order is free and the rearrangement of constituents has no implication for meaning. Due to this misconception, L2 speakers will often employ the order requiring the least cognitive effort, which mirrors the subject-initial pattern of English and SVO order in transitive clauses. This belief has consequences for second language (L2) production, as many elderly speakers engaged in revitaliza- tion efforts have repeatedly commented on the unnatural word order they have observed in their interactions with individuals from the L2 community. In all of the previous studies on the constituency orders in Algon- quian languages, none have been concerned with the variety of Ojibwe discussed here, known as “Southwestern Ojibwa” (Rhodes and Todd 1981) or “Southwestern Ojibwe” (Valentine 1994).5 However, Tomlin and Rhodes (1992) determined that VOS is the most neutral word order for , a sister language of Ojibwe. In his grammar of Odawa, Valentine (2001: 920)

4. Ojibwe people in and Minnesota have led the way in Ojibwe immersion education with the development of pre-K through 5th grade immersion at Waadooko- daading Ojibwe Immersion School at Lac Courte Oreilles, WI; K–6th grade at Niigaane in Leech Lake, MN; pre-K at Wicoie-Nandagikendan in Minneapolis, MN; Enweyang Language Nest in Duluth, MN; as well as the adult immersion effort of Ojibwemotaa- didaa Omaa Gidakiiminaang in Fond du Lac, MN. More recently, pre-K classrooms have been developed including the Miskwaanakwad classroom at Mille Lacs, MN; and the immersion classroom at the Early Childhood Center in Red Cliff, WI. 5. Sometimes spelled Ojibwe, Ojibwa, or Ojibway and referred to as Chippewa, I use the standard spelling of the practical double vowel orthography, rst devised by Charles Fiero and popularized in Nichols and Nyholm 1995. Common older spellings used for classication are maintained here where relevant. 332 MICHAEL SULLIVAN states that although word order is “relatively free,” certain orderings are “very infrequent.” Verb-initial orders are preferred, verb-medial orders are allowed, while the language “greatly disprefers” verb-nal orders (Valentine 2001:936). “When nominals are introduced into a narrative, they tend to occur before the verb. When nominals are subsequently referred to, they tend to occur after the verb” (Valentine 2001:951–952). Essentially, the verb serves as a “pivot” that indexes information as being either old or new (Valentine 2001:952). In the next section, I provide a brief description of the language under discussion as background for the subsequent discussion of word order.

BACKGROUND AND PRELIMINARIES

The Ojibwe language is polysynthetic: Words are often comprised of many , and inected verbal constructions can constitute full and well- formed sentences. are divided into two , animate and inani- mate. People, animals, trees, and most things that are inherently “alive” are animate in addition to motorized modes of transportation such as cars, trains, and other objects with the ability to move on their own power and that can serve as agents of action. Also, there are grammatical animates as well, such as things of spiritual/cultural importance such as tobacco, drums, and pipes. In addition to these more intuitive animates, there is an arbitrary distinction of in certain items, such as clothing and food. For instance, pants and underwear are animate, along with certain foods such as bread, certain berries (raspberries are animate, blueberries are not), and bubble gum.6 Another important feature of Ojibwe morphology and grammar is the notion of obviation, a morphological marking system employed to keep track of multiple third-person participants. Because word order typically does not signal grammatical relations, the language relies on the morpho- logical marking of the verb and certain NPs. Compare the sentences given below in (7), (8), and (9) and the clause-nal NP of each:

6. This is further complicated by the fact that there is no real consensus from com- munity to community regarding the animacy status of certain items; for instance, cars are animate in the southern varieties, inanimate in the north. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 333

(7) ni-gikenim-aa a’aw inini 1-know-DIR DEM man ‘I know that man.’

(8) gi-gikenim-aa a’aw inini 2-know-DIR DEM man ‘You know that man.’

(9) o-gikenim-aa-n iniw inini-wan 3-see-know-DIR-OBV DEM-OBV man-OBV

‘S/hePROX knows the manOBV.’

The NPs in (7) and (8) show no overt morphological marking on the ‘that man’ and the argument is proximate. In the example provided in (9) however, the verb, the demonstrative , along with the noun itself show additional marking, indicating that the object is obviative, or a second third person in the discourse. In addition to the morphological marking of the nouns, the possibility for ambiguity is further minimized by the direction morphology contained in the verb that keeps track of who is doing what to whom. Compare (9) above with (10) below:

(10) O-gikenim-igoo-n iniw inini-wan 3-know-INV-OBV DEM-OBV man-OBV

‘The manOBV knows him/herPROX.’

The direction morphology of Algonquian languages is usually dis- cussed in terms of direct and inverse. This involves a person/animacy hier- archy sometimes referred to as an agency hierarchy or an empathy hierarchy (Comrie 1989).7 Valentine (2001) collapses three categories into one (person, animacy, and proximate/obviative), which he refers to as the “Nishnaabem- win Topicality Hierarchy” (2001:268). This is shown here in (11):

7. Croft (1990) provides a further distinction between higher animals and lower ani- mals, and indicates that in Navajo, this ranking has effects on word order where the higher ranked argument always precedes the lower ranked argument. 334 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

(11) Nishnaabemwin Topicality Hierarchy (Valentine 2001) 2 > 1 > X > 3 > 3 > 0

When the action comes from a higher ranked participant further left on the hierarchy, direct morphology appears. When the action is initiated by an actor lower ranked than the theme, inverse morphology is employed.

METHODOLOGY

The aim of the present study is to determine whether there are preferences in word order for sentences uttered in spontaneous situations, and so pic- tures were used as prompts. The intent was to avoid direct translation from English that may affect the quality of the data obtained. In languages that allow multiple possible orders there is a danger that the speaker will trans- late English prompts and show effects of “priming” in which the prompts of the linguist become the only “context for subsequent utterances,” where “examples elicited via translation tasks often exhibit word order that mirrors English (SVO)” (Cook and Mühlbauer 2006:109–110). Another important distinction to make is between what is acceptable by a speaker and what is actually produced or preferred:

Interestingly, freedom of word order is not equally demonstrated by the linguist and the consultant. Although it is true that many word orders are deemed acceptable by speakers, the variety of word orders produced by the native speaker in a natural context shows a great deal less variation. (Mühlbauer 2003:2)

Using pictures, however, provides “limitless opportunity” into under- standing language structure (Hayes 1954:189). Picture elicitation is noth- ing new in eld methodology and actually was quite popular in the earlier American Structuralist tradition.8 The method demands spontaneous lan- guage production rooted only in the context of the picture being described and free from the inuence of the structure of the linguist’s prompts:

The informant is shown such a picture and asked to talk about it in his language. Anything he may say is just what we are looking for. The purpose

8. See Hayes (1954) and Yegerlehner (1955) for early arguments for the use of pictures in linguistic eldwork. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 335

is to obtain meaning in terms of the language being investigated, rather than in terms of translation, and to obtain short texts which would be unaffected by the structure of the investigator’s language. (Hayes 1954:186)

For the present study, 194 digital images were collected using the Google image search. Many of the pictures collected showed traditional seasonal subsistence activities common in Ojibwe culture, including harvesting, hunting and shing, as well as traditional powwow singing and dancing. These are all areas I knew my consultant would be comfortable talking about. Some pictures however, were selected to determine how a speaker would refer to certain nontraditional cultural notions such as modern styles of clothing, technology, and sports. Other pictures were specically selected to tease out some of the semantic/syntactic notions of Ojibwe gram- mar discussed above including the person hierarchy, inverse action, and obviation. During the elicitation, I showed the pictures on my laptop to the speaker and encouraged him to “make statements” about each picture.9 No other procedural instructions were given. The session was recorded and the speaker offered a translation on the spot. Speaker translations have been maintained in most cases, except when original translations were ambigu- ous or clumsy in English. Punctuation and sentence boundaries are based on the speaker’s intuitions about what a “sentence” is.

FINDINGS

The 194 pictures described above prompted a total of 244 sentences. Some pictures prompted a simple sentence, while others prompted short narratives, up to four punctuated sentences. The results are divided into four sets, as described below.

Group A: Simple Sentences Group A is the largest of the four sets and accounts for 114 of the 244 total sentences collected in the study. “Simple sentence” here refers to single-

9. The phrase “making statements” included in the title of this paper is a reection of my consultant’s instructions to me in my own language production. In one situation where I asked him in Ojibwe what he wanted to eat for lunch, the intonation of my question resembled the question intonation of English. He lectured me about how Ojibwe speakers “make statements” and how it was unnecessary for me to frame my question in the pattern of English. 336 MICHAEL SULLIVAN clause constructions that contain only one verb. An example of a Group A sentence is provided below in (12):

(12) Group A example (simple sentence) Onzaam wewiib o-gagwe-bakite’aan i’ bikwaakwad excess hurry 3-try-hit.it DEM ball wa’aw bakitejii’ige-inini. DEM baseball-player ‘This batter is swinging too early to hit that ball.’

Table 1 below shows the most common word order for sentences with one overt argument, followed by sentences with two overt arguments (subject and object NPs), with the last two rows showing the ordering in ditransitive constructions. All of the ditransitive examples showed primary object followed by secondary object.10 The presence of inverse morphology is also accounted for in the table and proves relevant to the subsequent discussion of VSO order.

TABLE 1: Group A (simple sentences)

ORDER INVERSE TOTAL VS 0 5211 SV 0 2 VO 0 3 OV 0 0 VOS 0 39 VSO 3 9 SVO 1 2 OVS 0 1 OSV 0 0 SOV 0 0 VSOO 1 2 VOOS 0 4 Total 114

10. For a discussion of ditransitive in Ojibwe and the distinction between primary and secondary objects see Rhodes 1990 and 2010. 11. The subjects of four of the VS sentences were semantic themes of verbs with indenite actors. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 337

Group B: Complex Sentences, Shared Subject

The second set (Group B) represents 33 pictures that prompted complex sentences sharing a subject. Complex sentences are dened here as those that contain more than one clause; that is, at least two verbs. The examples consist mainly of a matrix clause followed by an embedded clause in the conjunct order. An example is provided below in (13):

(13) Group B example (complex sentence, shared subject) Zhoomiingweni wa’aw ikwezens gii-pakwem-aad iniw akandamoo-n. smile DEM girl PST-bite.off-3>3 DEM-OBV banana-OBV ‘This girl is smiling after taking a bite of the banana.’

Table 2 shows the data from Group B with the arrangement of con- stituents in the leftmost column, followed by the word order for each clause. Totals for each order found in each type of clause appear at the bottom. For sentences in which both verbs occur before the subject is expressed, the matrix clause is analyzed as VS or VOS where applicable.

TABLE 2: Group B (complex sentences, shared subject)

MATRIX CLAUSE DEPENDENT CLAUSE ORDER OF INDEFINITE INDEFINITE CONSTITUENTS ORDER TOTAL ACTOR ORDER TOTAL ACTOR VSV VS 13 1 SV 13 4 VSVO VS 5 1 SVO 5 0 VOSV VOS 4 0 SV 4 0 VSOV VSO 2 0 SOV 2 0 VVS VS 1 0 VS 1 0 VVOS VS 1 0 VOS 1 0 VOSVO VOS 1 0 SVO 1 0 VOSOV VOS 4 0 SOV 4 0 OVSV OVS 1 0 SV 1 0 OVVOS OVS 1 0 VOS 1 0 Totals: 33 VS: 20; VOS: 9 Indenite SV:18; SVO: 6 Indenite VSO: 2; OVS: 2 Actor: 2 SOV: 6; VOS: 2 Actor: 4 VS: 1 338 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

Group C: Complex Sentences; Different Subjects

The third and smallest set, Group C, consists of 11 sentences total. Group C contains complex sentences where the subjects of the two clauses are distinct. As (14) shows, the subject of the matrix clause is the object or theme of the dependent clause:

(14) Group C example (complex sentence, different subjects) Noonde-bagamibatoo aw bakitejii’ige-inini dabwaa-debibin-igod early-arrive.running DEM baseball-player before-catch-INV.3>3S

iniw nakwebijige-ininiwan. DEM-OBV catcher ‘The batter already reached the base before the baseman tagged him.’

Table 3 (on facinge page) is parallel to Table 2, with a distinction made between the matrix clause and dependent clause(s). The example provided below in (15) is the only example found in the data with three clauses, each with its own distinct subject:

(15) Aatwaakosin iw dikinaagan nibaa-d aw abinoojiins anooj lean.against.tree DEM cradle.board sleep-3S DEM baby various

imaa gegoo agoode-ni. there things hanging-OBV ‘The cradle board is leaning against a tree with a baby sleeping in it and all kinds of decorations hanging down.’

While the cradleboard is the subject of the matrix clause, it is not the subject of each clause contained in the sentence. This is precisely the nature of sentences that make up Group C.

Group D: Multiple Sentences

The fourth and nal set (Group D) consists of pictures that prompted short narrative descriptions of at least two and up to four punctuated sentences. An example is given below in (16), in which the speaker describes a picture of some girls wearing jingle dresses:12

12. Participial verb forms (participles) such as naamijig in this example are treated as either nominal arguments or adjectival modiers in this study and are not counted as verbs. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 339 OTAL T NVERSE 2 LAUSE I . C EP RDER O OTAL T D LAUSE NVERSE C I EPENDENT RDER O OTAL T D NVERSE LAUSE C I ATRIX RDER O

3: Group C (complex sentence, different subjects) 3: Group C (complex sentence, different : 11 : 11 VOS: 2 VS: 8; Indef. VS: 3; OVS: 3 Indef. ONSTITUENTS ABLE NDEFINITE I T VSV M VS 13 1 SV 13 4 C VSVS VS 0 2 OVS 2 0 2 OVS VS VSVS VSVS VS 0 3 VS 3 0 3 VS VS VSVS VSOV VS 0 2 SOV 0 2 0 2 SOV VS VSOV VOSVS VOS 0 1 OVS 1 0 1 OVS VOS VOSVS VOSVS VOS 0 1 VS 0 1 0 1 VS VOS VOSVS VOVS VO 0 1 VS 0 1 0 1 VS VO VOVS VSVSSV VS 0 1 VS 0 1 SV 0 1 0 1 SV 0 1 VS VS VSVSSV VO: 1 Actor: 0 2 SOV: Actor: 6 Totals 340 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

(16) Group D example (short narrative) Ziibaaska’igan-an o-biizikaan-aawaa ongow ikwezens-ag naamijig. jingle-PL 3-wear-3P>0 DEM girl-PL dancers-VAI-PRT

Waanda-minwaande-wan. Mewinzha ko gaawiin especially-nicely.colored-PL long.ago customarily NEG

ogii-piizikan-ziin-aawaa iw dinowa. Miinawaa gaawiin 3-PST-wear-NEG-3P>0 DEM kind and NEG

gii-padakibinwe’o-sii-wag ingiw ikwezens-ag. PST-wear.feather.in hair.-NEG-3PL DEM girl-PL

‘These girl dancers are wearing jingle dresses. They are beautifully colored. Long ago they didn’t wear that kind. And also, girls didn’t wear feathers on their head.’

Of the 194 total pictures used, 36 prompted these responses. The 36 short narrative responses consisted of 86 total punctuated sentences. Due to the varying range of possible responses that comprise Group D, no table is provided, though a discussion of the generalizations that can be made follows.

DISCUSSION

As the data presented above clearly indicate, when no discourse driven factors are at play, overt nominal expressions are preferred in a postverbal position. When both arguments of a verb appear overtly, the subject tends to follow the object. The preference for VS over SV in simple sentences (Group A) is extremely strong (52:2). When both arguments appear, VOS is strongly preferred, while the English-like SVO commonly found in texts was extremely rare in this sample. Of the nine VSO examples from Table 1, two were reexive verbs as shown in (17):

(17) 5HÀH[LYH Zhakamoonindizo a’aw chi-ogimaa iniw gwekiwebinigan-an. spoon.feed.self DEM president DEM-OBV pancake-OBV ‘The President is feeding himself pancakes.’ MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 341

As the table indicates, three of the nine VSO sentences contained inverse morphology, with the obviative actor occurring between the verb and the proximate object argument. An example of this type is shown in (18):

(18) O-zagam-igoo-n iniw animoons-an wa’aw inini. 3-attach.by.mouth-INV-3 DEM-OBV puppy-OBV DEM man ‘The dog attached himself to this man.’

The tendency for the obviative argument to appear closer to the verb than the proximate argument is common in Algonquian languages (cf. Junker 2004). The picture that prompted example (18) shows a small dog biting the ankle of what is presumably a man. The picture shows only the dog and the lower section of a person’s leg, to which the dog is attached. Constructions such as (18), containing the inverse, hint at a ranking of animacy (“higher” vs. “lower” animates discussed in Croft 1990). Similar patterns arise in other instances when some odd or unusual action is car- ried out by something that for whatever reason (smaller, more familiar, less culturally powerful) is lower ranked with respect to another animate entity. The example in (19) offers another case:

(19) O-biminizha’-ogoo-n iniw gaazhagens-an aw waawaashkeshi. 3-chase-INV-3 DEM-OBV cat-OBV DEM deer ‘The cat is chasing the deer.’

The data in Group B show similar preferences for verb-initial word order: no subject-initial example appeared in all 33 of the matrix clauses. For the dependent clauses, however, numerous subject-initial examples were found. As Table 2 indicates, a complex sentence with VSV order is counted twice: once for VS and once for SV. In all 30 of the subject-initial dependent clauses, each subject had already been counted in the verb-initial matrix clause. The smallest group of the sample (11 sentences), Group C, shows that there are different patterns when subjects differ across clauses. Recall that in this group, the subject of the matrix clause is the object of the dependent clause. Verb-initial preferences hold in Group C where subject-initial orders surface only twice. 342 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

For Group D, examples where the picture prompted more than one sentence, a range of responses between two and four sentences were found. The preferred verb-initial orders were found in 23 of the 36 introductory sentences (VS: 15, VOS: 8), while few subject-initial examples were found. Object-initial clauses, however, accounted for 6 of the 21 second sentences of the group. In all six of these examples, the subject of the verb of the second sentence had already been established in the introductory sentence. One such example is provided below in (20):

(20) O-biigwa’aan iw biiwaabiko-makak wa’aw inini. Waagaakwad 3-break.it DEM metal-box DEM man. axe

od-aabajitoon. Miinawaa ge aw ikwe gibishenidizo. 3-use and also DEM woman cover.ones.ears

Onzaam ombiigwewe-ni. too.much loud-OBV

‘This man is breaking up a metal box. He is using an axe. And that woman is covering her ears. It’s too loud for her.’

In the third sentence, the topic shifts from the man to the woman in the picture who is covering her ears. This topic shift is indicated by the preverbal position of the NP ‘that woman’. Several arguments have been made for other Algonquian languages regarding preverbal position for NP arguments with a topic or focus interpretation (e.g., Dahlstrom 1995; Mühlbauer 2003; Junker 2004; Johnson et al. 2011). The data found here reect a “cross-family tendency to make use of an articulated left periphery for purposes of expressing the discourse function of particular arguments” (Johnson et al. 2011:18). Johnson et al. identify preverbal arguments as being “associated with either a topic or focus interpretation, while postverbal arguments are in the default position” (2011:1). Topic is dened around the principle of “aboutness,” essentially, what the sentence is about. This is sometimes discussed in terms of old or given information (Givon 1983). The position is also used in topic maintenance strategies, whether a new topic is introduced or an old one returned to the foreground. This is illustrated nicely in the example shown in (21), where the sentence is about the circular power saw shown in bold: MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 343

(21) Gezhiibaabizo-nid giishkiboojigan-an od-aabaji’-aa-n giishkiboon-aad IC-spin-OBV saw-OBV 3-use-DIR-OBV saw-3>3

iniw nabagisag-oon a’aw inini. DEM-OBV board-OBV DEM man ‘The man is using a circular power saw to cut the board.’

Focus is dened as the new information in a given context. This denition is rather straightforward though there are a number of functions that can be carried out through the focus on a particular NP. One of the functions of focus is to restrict information, which can be seen below in the Fox example shown in (22):

(22) Restrictive focus (from Dahlstrom 1995:11)

[Foc še·ški=meko kehkeše·wi ] [Obl i·nahi ] ahte·wi only=EMPH charcoal there be.[there].0/IND.IND ‘only charcoal was there’

The example provided below in (23) shows a similar construction with restrictive focus from my data:13

(23) Mii eta go bagizowayaan-an baazikang. mii only EMPH swimsuit-PL IC-wear-3S ‘It is just her swimsuit (bikini) that she is wearing.’

Dahlstrom also notes that indenite and quantiers “pattern with focus” in Fox (1995:11–12), also pointed out for (Shields 2004:373, Johnson et al. 2011:8). An example of a preverbal indenite is provided in the second sentence shown here in (24) with the indenite bolded:

(24) Od-izhinoo’aan o-baashkizigaans aw gwiiwizens. 3-point 3.POSS-pistol DEM boy

13. Fairbanks (2008) describes the many uses of mii in Ojibwe including its use as a deictic particle providing “further focus” to an NP that is already in a focus position (Fairbanks 2008:176). 344 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

Maagizhaa gegoo o-wii-paashkizaan. maybe something 3-FUT-shoot.it ‘The boy is pointing his pistol. Maybe he is going to shoot something.’

In addition to preverbal indenites, quantiers are also commonly found in the preverbal focus position. The example provided here in (25) illustrates this with the two quantiers bolded:

(25) Mazinaakizo-wag omaa megwaa-biboon-inig ongow waagosh-ag. Bezhig be.pictured-3P here mid-winter-OBV DEM fox-PL one

miskozi, miinawaa bezhig waabishkizi. red and one white ‘Foxes are pictured here in mid-winter. One is red and one is white.’

Johnson et al. also discuss examples where the focused item expresses surprising information. This is illustrated in the example shown here in (26) where the speaker offered the sentence after seeing a picture of a man biting a dog:

(26) Aw gaawanaadizi-d inini o-dakwam-aa-n iniw o-day-an. DEM IC-crazy-3S man 3-bite-DIR-3 DEM-OBV 3.POSS-pet-OBV ‘The crazy man is biting his dog.’

It should be noted, however, that the ndings presented here are oppo- site of those found in a similar picture description task with speakers of Odawa (Christianson and Ferreira 2005). In their study, consultants were asked questions about each picture: a general question, along with specic questions about participants in the action illustrated. They found that pre- verbal subjects (SV and SVO) were most common in Odawa. Since ques- tions, by denition, request new information, their data is perhaps more useful in the discussion of focus constructions rather than basic constituent order. Dahlstrom (1995:11) indicates that answers to questions appear in focus position and Junker (2004:253–254) found it was only such focused constructions that were accepted as a “felicitous answer” rather than the unmarked, verb-initial renderings. Since the goal of the present study was primarily to identify the pre- ferred unmarked word order for spontaneous sentences, there is very little MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 345 data here which is relevant to the use of preverbal positions, which require prior discourse. The example in (27), however, suggests support of an analy- sis like Johnson et al. (2011) in regards to the function of the preverbal positions. The preverbal elements are bolded:

(27) Biindigeshimo-wag omaa waabanda’iwe-niimi’iding ongow -g. dance.in-3P here show-powwow DEM anishinaabe-PL

O’ow nitam miigwani-gikiwe’on o-biindigeshimotaadaan. DEM rst feather-ag 3-dance.in

Miinawaa ingiw aanind gikiwe’on-an o-bi-dakonaan-aawaan ingiw and DEM some ag-PL 3-here-hold-3P>0P DEM

zhiimaaganish-ag. soldier-PL ‘The Anishinaabe are dancing in during grand entry. First the eagle staff is danced in. And some veterans are holding ÀDJV.’

CONCLUSION

The purpose of this study has been to determine whether there are any notable word order preferences in spontaneous Ojibwe sentences uttered “out of the blue.” The verb-initial preference shown here can provide impor- tant and much-needed pedagogical models for language teachers teaching sentence structure and composition, as well as for those involved in learn- ing and studying Ojibwe. The suggestion of preverbal positions indicating topic and focus positions is also benecial for the revitalization movement in that the apparently scattered and chaotic arrangement of constituents has an explanation. In general, overt arguments of a verb follow that verb and when they are preverbal, they have a specic function. The study itself is not without limitations. The rst and perhaps most obvious limitation is that the experiment was administered to only one speaker, and whether or not his overall preferences hold among other speak- ers awaits further inquiry. The fact that the ndings here mirror those of Tomlin and Rhodes (1992) for Odawa, and Junker (2004) for East Cree is, however, noteworthy, and future efforts should focus on the preverbal tendencies across the Algonquian family. 346 MICHAEL SULLIVAN

REFERENCES

Bloomeld, Leonard. 1957. Eastern Ojibwa: Grammatical sketch, texts, and word list, ed. by Charles F. Hockett. Ann Arbor: University of Press. Branigan, Phil, and Marguerite McKenzie. 2002. Word order variation at the left periph- ery in Innu-aimun. Papers of the 33rd Algonquian Conference, ed. by H. C. Wolfart. pp. 110–119. : University of . Christianson, Kiel, and Fernanda Ferreira. 2005. Conceptual accessibility and sentence production in a free word order language (Odawa). Cognition 98:105–135. Comrie, Bernard. 1989. Language universals and linguistic typology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cook, Clare, and Jeffery Mühlbauer. 2006. The behavior of obviation in elicitation. Papers of the 37th Algonquian Conference, ed. by H. C. Wolfart, pp. 77–104. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Croft, William. 1990. Typology and universals. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dahlstrom, Amy. 1991. Plains Cree morphosyntax. New York: Garland Publishing. Dahlstrom, Amy. 1995. Topic, focus, and other word order problems in Algonquian. The 1994 Belcourt Lecture. Voices of Rupert’s Land, Winnipeg. Fairbanks, Brendan. 2008. All About mii. Papers of the 39th Algonquian Conference, ed. by Karl S. Hele, and Regna Darnell, pp. 166–221. Toronto: York University. Givón, Talmy. 1983. Topic continuity in discourse: A quantitative cross-language study. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Guile, Timothy. 2001. Sketch of Menominee grammar. An Anthology of Menominee sayings, with translations, annotations, and grammatical sketch, pp. 452–501. München: LINCOM Europa. Hayes, Alfred S. 1954. Field procedures while working with Diegueño. International Journal of American Linguistics 20:185–194. Johnson, Meredith, Monica Macaulay, Bryan Rosen, and Rachel Wang. 2011. A survey of Menominee word order. Paper read at the 43rd Algonquian Conference, Uni- versity of Michigan. Junker, Marie-Odile. 2004. Focus, obviation, and word order in East Cree. Lingua 114:345–365. Mühlbauer, Jeffery. 2003. Word-order and the interpretation of nominals in Plains Cree. Unpublished manuscript, University of . Nichols, John D., and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A concise dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rhodes, Richard A., and Evelyn Todd. 1981. Subarctic Algonquian languages. Handbook of North American Indians 6:52–66. Rhodes, Richard A. 1990. Ojibwe secondary objects. Grammatical relations: A cross- theoretical perspective, ed. by K. Dziwirek, P. Farrell, and E. Mejias-Bikandi, pp. 401–414. Stanford, CA: CSLI. Rhodes, Richard A. 2010. Ditransitive constructions in Ojibwe. Studies in ditransitive constructions: A comparative handbook, ed. by A.Malchukov, M. Haspelmath, and B. Comrie. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton. MAKING STATEMENTS IN OJIBWE 347

Richards, Norvin W. 2004. The syntax of the conjunct and independent orders in Wam- panoag. International Journal of American Linguistics 70:327–368. Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language: An introduction to the study of speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company. Shields, Rebecca. 2004. Word order and discourse in Menominee. Papers of the 35th Algonquian Conference, ed. by H. C. Wolfart, pp. 373–388. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. Tomlin, Russell, and Richard A. Rhodes. 1992 [1972]. Information distribution in Ojibwa. 3UDJPDWLFV RI ZRUG RUGHU ÀH[LELOLW\, ed. by Doris Payne, pp. 117–135. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Valentine, J. Randolph. 1994. Ojibwe dialect relationships. PhD thesis, University of Texas at Austin. Valentine, J. Randolph. 2001. Nishnaabemwin reference grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Yegerlehner, John. 1955. A note on eliciting techniques. International Journal of Ameri- can Linguistics 21:286–288.