Ojibwe phonology

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The Anishinaabe language or the Ojibwe group of languages is an Algonquian American Indian language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest American Indian languages north of Mexico in terms of number of speakers, and exhibits a large number of divergent dialects. For the most part, this article describes the Minnesota variety of the Southwestern dialect of Anishinaabemowin, also known as Ojibwemowin. The educational orthography used in Minnesota Ojibwemowin is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.

Contents

[edit] Phonemes

Ojibwe dialects tend to have 29 phonemes: 11 vowels (seven oral and four nasal) and 18 consonants. The obstruents of Ojibwe have a lenis/fortis contrast, but in state of transition to the voiced/voiceless ones. In the lenis/fortis contrast classification, all consonants are considered voiceless. The fortis consonants are characterised by being pronounced more strongly and are longer in duration. They often are aspirated or preaspirated. The lenis consonants have transitioned to being voiced in many communities (although they often tend to be voiceless at the end of words). They are pronounced less strongly and are shorter in duration, compared to the fortis ones. The semivowel transcribed <w> is actually a velar approximant, with very little labial closure at all.

Ojibwe has a series of three short oral vowels and four long ones. The two series are characterized by both length and quality differences. The short vowels are /ɪ o ə/ (roughly the vowels in American English 'bit,' 'boat,' and 'about,' respectively), and the corresponding long vowels are /iː oː aː/ (roughly as in 'beet,' 'boat' (but longer), and 'father,' respectively); there is also an additional long vowel which lacks a corresponding short vowel, /eː/ (roughly as in 'bait'). /o/ varies across dialects between /o/ and /ʊ/ (roughly as in 'book'), and /oː/ varies between /oː/ and /uː/ (roughly as in 'boot'). /eː/ also varies with /ɛː/ (roughly as in 'bet'), and /ə/ with /ʌ/ (roughly as in 'putt').

Ojibwe also has four nasal vowels, all of them long. They can occur both as predictable allophonic variants of the normal long vowels when followed by a nasal+fricative cluster, but also in unpredictable environments (although they are always morpheme-final). The nasal vowels are /ãː ẽː ĩː õː/. Nasalized allophones of the short vowels also exist (see below).

The true nasal vowel phonemes mostly occur with kinship terms (e.g., -iijikiwenh-, "brother," -noshenh-, "cross-aunt," -oozhishenh-, "grandchild") and animal names (e.g., bineshiinh, "bird," asabikeshiinh, "spider," awesiinh, "wild animal"), and also frequently when a connotation of smallness is involved.

In Wisconsin varieties of Ojibwe and in some Saulteaux communities surrounding Lake of the Woods, additional vowels exists. One of the most noted is the short e that have not transitioned to i like in most Ojibwe dialects. Often, the Wisconsin and some Saulteaux communities show a vowel reduction to a schwa, which in the Fiero orthography often is written as e, i or a when compared to the more common a or i. In eastern Wisconsin and western Upper Peninsula of Michigan, the Ojibwe also exhibits the diphthong ai as a variation of e; this is notable only because diphthongs generally do not exist in Ojibwe other than in those communities that have lost glottal stops.

The glottal fricative /h/ occurs infrequently in most dialects, but in some dialects it has taken the place of /ʔ/ (like the catch in the throat in the middle of 'uh-oh').

The consonants written sh, zh, ch, and j are pronounced roughly as English "sh," "s" in 'vision,' "ch," and "j" (as in 'joke'), respectively. In Salteaux (Plains Ojibwe), sh and zh have merged with s and z (so, for example, Southwestern Ojibwe wazhashk, "muskrat," is wazask in Salteaux). This merging creates additional consonant clusters of sp and st in addition to sk common in all Ojibwe dialects.

[edit] Vowels

Front Central back
Close iː ĩː (uː) (ũː)
Near-Close ɪ (ʊ)
Mid eː ẽː ə o oː õː
Open aː ãː

[edit] Consonants

Bilabial Alveolar Postalveolar Velar Glottal
Plosive p b t d k ɡ ʔ
Affricate ʧ ʤ
Fricative s z ʃ ʒ (h)
Nasal m n
Approximant j ɰ

[edit] Phonological Processes

The nasal allophones of oral vowels are derived from a short vowel followed by a nasal+fricative cluster (for example, imbanz, "I’m singed," is [ɪmbə̃z]). The nasalized allophones of vowels before such clusters, however, only exist in some dialects; in others, imbanz would simply be pronounced [ɪmbənz]. For many speakers, the nasal allophones appear not only before nasal+fricative clusters, but also before all fricatives, particularly if the vowel is preceded by another nasal. E.g., for some speakers, waabooz, "rabbit," is pronounced [ɰaːbõːz], and for many, mooz, "moose," is pronounced [mõːz].

/n/ before velars becomes [ŋ] (as in English 'sing').

A defining characteristic of many of the more northern and eastern dialects is that they exhibit a great deal of vowel syncope, the deletion of vowels in certain positions within a word. In these dialects, generally all unstressed vowels are lost (see below for a discussion of Ojibwe stress). For example, the name for the language itself is Anishinaabemowin in the Southwestern Ojibwe dialect, but in the Odaawaa dialect the name is Nishnaabemwin, where the unstressed vowels from Anishinaabemowin have been lost.

A common morphophonemic variation occurs in some verbs whose roots end in -n. When the root is followed by certain suffixes beginning with i or when it is word-final, the root-final -n changes to -zh (e.g., -miin-, "to give something to someone," but gimiizhim, "you guys give it to me"). In Ojibwe linguistics, this is indicated when writing the root with the symbol <N> (so the root "to give something to someone" would be written <miiN>).

There are also some morphophonemic alternations where root-final -s changes to -sh (indicated with <S>). Though this morphophonemic alteration is not as common, the most common example is mishi, "firewood" (singular), and misan, "firewood" (plural); root as <miS>.

[edit] Prosody

Ojibwe divides words into metrical "feet." Counting from the beginning of the word, each group of two syllables constitutes a foot; the first syllable in a foot is weak, the second strong. However, long vowels and vowels in the last syllable of a word are always strong, so if they occur in the weak slot of a foot, then they form a separate one-syllable foot, and counting resumes starting with the following vowel. For example, the word bebezhigooganzhii, "horse," is divided into feet as (be)(be)(zhi-goo)(gan-zhii). The strong syllables all receive at least secondary stress. The rules that determine which syllable receives the primary stress are quite complex and many words are irregular. In general, though, the strong syllable in the third foot from the end of a word receives the primary stress.

[edit] Phonotactics

Ojibwe in general permits relatively few consonant clusters, and most are only found word-medially. The permissible ones are -sk-, -shp-, -sht-, -shk- (which can also appear word-finally), -mb-, -nd- (which can also appear word-finally),-ng- (also word-finally), -nj- (also word-finally), -nz-, -nzh- (also word-finally) and -ns- (also word-finally). Furthermore, any consonant (except w, h, or y) and some clusters can be followed by w (although not word-finally). Many dialects, however, permit far more clusters as a result of vowel syncope.

[edit] Historical phonology

In the evolution from Proto-Algonquian to Ojibwe, the most sweeping change was the voicing of all Proto-Algonquian voiceless obstruents except when they were in clusters with *h, *ʔ, *ɬ, or *t (which were subsequently lost). Proto-Algonquian *r and *ɬ became Ojibwe n.

The relatively symmetrical Proto-Algonquian vowel system, *i, *ī, *e, *ē, *a, *ā, *o, *ō remained fairly intact in Ojibwe, although *e and *i merged as i, and the short vowels, as described above, underwent a quality change as well.

Some examples of the changes at work are presented in the table below:

Proto-Algonquian Ojibwe reflex
(Saulteaux)		 Ojibwe reflex
(Fiero)		 Gloss
*penkwi pinkwi bingwi "ashes"
*mekiɬēwa mikiš migizh "to bark at"
*šīʔšīpa šîhšîp zhiishiib "duck"
*atkyi ahki aki "earth"
*-tēh- -têh- -de'- "heart" (root)
*erenyiwa inini inini "man"
*wetpwākana ohpwâkan opwaagan "pipe"

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Nichols, John D. and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
  • Rhodes, Richard A. 1985. Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
  • Valentine, J. Randolph "Randy". 2001. Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

[edit] External links

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