The Ojibwa Element in Michif PETER BARKER University of Amsterdam 1. Introduction Michif, one of the languages spoken by the descendants of the Red River Metis, is known as a mixture of Plains Cree and French in the linguistic literature. This paper will only deal with the Algonquian part of the lan­ guage, which is the verb phrase, the demonstratives and some adverbial expressions.1 The language has been described as consisting of Cree verbs and French nouns (Rhodes 1977). Its speakers, however, sometimes describe the language as a mixture of Cree, French and Saulteaux. Saulteaux is the name for the Ojibwa language in Canada, with some distinctive dialectal features. Field research in different Michif-speaking communities confirm that there is indeed a small but constant Saulteaux/Ojibwa stratum. This is not only the case in the communities where Ojibwa is spoken alongside Michif,2 but even in communities where no Ojibwa is spoken. This is important for the origin of Michif. In the first place it appears that the Cree part of Michif is different from other dialects of Cree. What implications does this have for Cree dialectology? In the second place these Saulteaux elements may point to a certain geographic origin of the ancestors of the present day Michif speakers. Is it possible to use linguistic data to point to an area where this Proto-Michif originated? In the third place, i-This research was supported by the Foundation for Language Research, which is fundS b^The Netherlands Organization for Research, NWO. Fieldwork was carried out L the summer of 1990 in North Dakota, Manitoba Saskatchewan and Sberta I want to express my sincere gratitude to all my Metis friends for their ^osphality, their help with my research and for feeding me rababu, la galet, les beignes and wild meat and other food. ,„.... , • •!,„ IThe c Y/Dt°k s^r "rrwSf 2zfiift£ ISMS significant. Considering these facts, this influence wdl be no surprise. 11 12 PETER BARKER French and Cree are mixed in several Metis communities, in sometimes different ways. Is any mixture of French and Cree to be called Michif. Did the language arise separately in different areas or is there one Proto-Micnii. 2. The Language Facts As said above, the verb phrase in Michif is almost identical to the verb phrase in Plains Cree. In this section we will discuss the major differences. For comparison we also give Saulteaux forms in most cases,3 since Michif appears to side with Saulteaux whenever there are differences from Plains Cree. There are differences on the phonological, morphonological, morpho­ logical and lexical level. 2.1. Phonology a. PA *s and *s: On the phonological level, there are a number of differ­ ences between Plains Cree and Michif Cree, the most striking involving the reflexes of Proto Algonquian *s and *$. In Ojibwa, including the Saulteaux dialect, this *s/*s contrast is preserved, presumably in all dialects. In Plains Cree, however, the two phonemes merged into /s/. In Michif Cree too, the contrast is lost, but they merged into /§/. Michif Cree shares this with the eastern dialects of Cree from the westcoast of James Bay eastward (Rhodes and Todd 1981). Related with this, the reflex of PA *c is /c/ in Michif and /c/ in Plains Cree. b. Nasal vowels: Plains Cree has no phonemic nasal vowels, whereas Michif Cree shows nasal vowels in a number of Cree words. Some of the Cree words which are systematically nasalized in Michif are ohi (demonstrative animate obviative or inanimate plural) and some other demonstratives, the question element ci, and some lexical elements like metawe- 'to play' Nasal vowels in Michif Cree are /u:/, /£/ and /!:/ (and /a:/ ?) - all long vowels. This might be an influence from either Ojibwa or French Both French and Ojibwa have nasal vowels; in French high vowels are not nasalized In Ojibwa all vowels can be nasal. As /,/ can be nasalized in Ojibwa but not in French Ojibwa influence ,s more plausible. The equivalents of the Cree words with nasal vowels sometimes have nasals in Saulteaux (e g Michif ohi, Saulteaux ono). v 6-' c. The voiced/voiceless opposition: In Plainc rv*.„ «ve I. the phoootog.ca, ^L». Som, X^^X^^ 3Voorhis (1977) is my source for Saulteaux. THE OJIBWA ELEMENT IN MICHIF 13 position, but they are always voiceless in initial position.4 In Saulteaux, the voicing of intervocal stops is more frequent, but still voicing is not phonologically distinctive. In Michif, the situation is quite different from Plains Cree and Saulteaux. Stops are rarely if ever voiced between vowels. Cree maka 'but', for instance is phonetically [maga] in Plains Cree, but [maka] in Michif Cree. A second difference concerning the stops is the following situation. Ini­ tial stops in Michif can be voiced following a vowel elision rule: the first and second person prefixes can lose their vowel between two consonants, subse­ quently leading to a conflation of the two adjoining consonants. Plains Cree, Saulteaux and Michif can be said to represent three stages in a development. Plains Cree Saulteaux Michif ni-k- ng- g- ni-t- nd- d- ni-p- mb- b- ni-s- ns- ? z- ni-c- nc- ? dz- Most speakers of Michif are not aware that e.g., the first syllable in gi:- wa.pama.w 'I saw him' is underlyingly ni-ki:-wa:pama:w, which is the way it is pronounced in Plains Cree. Furthermore, the second person prefix fa- disappears before verb stems or other prefixes starting with k-. Thus Plains Cree ki-ki:wa:n 'you go home' appears as kki:wa:n or ki:wa:n in Michif. As a result, the Cree part of Michif is unusual among the Algonquian languages in distinguishing between voiced and unvoiced stops, e.g., in gaskihta:n 'I am able' vs. kaskihta.n 'you are able' (Plains Cree: ni-kaskihta:n vs. ki- kaskihta.n). But neither the Saulteaux prenasalized consonants nor Michif voiced consonants are unique in this. We find these same developments in some other dialects of Central Algonquian languages (Rhodes and Todd 1981:59- 60) I suspect that there is a connection between the loss of optional voicing in intervocal position and the presence of the feature voice in initial stops in particular contexts. With the vowel elision rule, the contrast between voiced and voiceless stops became phonologically distinctive, which led to making stops in intervocal positions unvoiced. A further point to be mentioned briefly is morphophonology^ The rules for vowel coalescence and insertion stated for Plains Cree in Wolfart (1973:79-83) seem to differ partly in Michif. This aspect has not ye been studied in detail. Wolfart (1989) shows that there is morphophonological variation in Plains Cree too. 'Sometimes the rule also works over word boundaries, especially between closely connected words and in rapid speech. 11 PETER BARKER 2.2. Morphology The inflectional morphology of the verb differs in a number of aspects from that in Plains Cree in ways not reported in Rhodes's (1977) description of Michif Cree verb morphology. The forms found until now which differ systematically from Plains Cree are, (all in the independent mode): Plains Cree Michif Saulteaux 1. 21 indep. lri-(na:)naw ki-na:n ki-na:n 2. 2/lpl TA pi. obj. ki-(na:)nawak ni/ki-na:nik ni/ki-na:nik ni-na:nak 3. ind. inv. 3'-3 -ik -iku5 -igu6 4. conj. prefixes e:-, ka:-, (ki)ta:- e:, ka:, ci- e:-, ka:-, ci:- This is of course not a significant portion of the verb morphology of Cree. Nevertheless it is striking that we find these deviant forms in apparently all Michif speaking communities. In all these forms, where Michif differs from Plains Cree, the morphology appears to be identical to that of Saulteaux. 2.3. Lexical differences The Michif verb lexicon is very close to that of Plains Cree. But there are some Michif verbs which consistently differ from that language. Some of the non-Plains Cree forms in Michif are: Plains Cree Michif Saulteaux to dance ni:mihito- ni:mi- ni:mi- to write 7 masinahike:- usipe:hike:- osipi:ke:(n)- girl 8 iskwe:sis kwezes (ik)kwe:ze s to be called isiyihka:so- isinihka:so- isinikka:so eat with someone wi:cimi:cisom- wituspam- wi:toppam- my namesake nikwe:me:s gweme ? In some cases the only difference is a reflex of Proto-Algonquian */ (e c form d "S ^Chif "' SaUUCaUX m thC f°Urth -ample'Ta de ved form used with the same meaning. In other cases the stem is different m^l^Z^trsZeZi. WCget "*-»•-*. «•-*«•» in both '™Z SnbZddi^CtS "T niWaabami°U> ^^m,gu, waabam.gun. Uavid Pentland (personal communication) comments tU * u L J at he had rec an identical form from Swampy Cree SDeakP« !f r ! P orded Swampy Cree informants (North Central ManHoba)uTe,?entral ^anitoba- My Plains Cree. lannoba) use the same form as used in Note that neither /z/ or /s/ are n»rt nf tu~ u • . part of Michif. ' ' P °f the Pho«olog,cal system of the Cree THE OJIBWA ELEMENT IN MICHIF 15 Again where Michif words differ from Plains Cree, they appear to be virtually identical to the Saulteaux forms. Michif nouns whkh are nol French or English are often Saulteaux rather than Cree. I suspect the last form in the list will have a Saulteaux equivalent too. There are some more differences between Plains Cree and Michif Cree, mostly of a quantitative nature. I will discuss these in further work that is currently in progress. 3. Discussion These facts presented above raise a number of questions, both of a com­ parative linguistic nature and of an historical nature.