User:Jomeara421/Ottawa

The basic form of a noun or verb word without any inflectional prefixes or suffixes is referred to as the stem.

The interaction between the combinations of prefixes and suffixes and Syncope results in the Ottawa word stem for ‘shoe’ having four different shapes or allomorphs where other non-syncopating dialects have only one allomorph for this word stem.

Reanalysis of Word Stems and Person Prefixes
Syncope in Nishnaabemwin has a significant impact on the morphology of the language, in particular the form of inflectional prefixes and the pronunciation of the basic form of word stems, i.e. the basic forms of words without inflectional prefixes or suffixes. Syncope produces alternations in the pronunciation of words, making interpretation of the analysis and structure of words more complex. The third person prefix /o-/ which occurs with both nouns and verbs is completely eliminated. As a result there is no direct grammatical marker to indicate third-person on inflected forms of nouns or verbs, unlike first- and second-person.

The addition of prefixes and suffixes to nouns and verbs creates variant pronunciations or allomorphs of the basic word stems. The first-, second- and third-person prefixes have different forms in Nishnaabemwin as opposed to non-syncopating dialects.

For example, the singular noun makizin 'shoe' has the following partial paradigm of possessive forms in Ottawa. The word ‘shoe’ has two different forms or allomorphs, one for forms without any personal prefix, and another for first- and second-person forms, with the same allomorph being used for the third-person forms, which has no prefix.

Vowel-Initial Stems
The rule of Syncope also has a significant impact on nouns and verbs that begin with a vowel. When added to a noun or verb stem that begins with a vowel, in non-syncopating dialects the consonant /d/ is added to the prefix. In Nishnaabemwin the Weak vowel of the prefix is deleted.

In the following table, the initial vowel /o-/ of the noun opwaagan ‘pipe’ is deleted in Nishnaabemwin because it is in a metrically Weak position, as in (a) in the table. Before a vowel-initial word in non-syncopating dialects, the first-person prefix takes the form /nid-/, and the initial vowel /o-/ of the noun is lengthened by a regular rule to /oo-/. In Nishnaabemwin the prefix has the form /nd-/, and the vowel of the noun is also /oo-/.

For a noun such as Nishnaabemwin pwaagan, ‘pipe,’ which is missing the initial short vowel that occurs in other dialects, the first-person possessive form ndoopwaagan ‘my pipe’ is reanalyzed as consisting of a prefix /ndoo-/ and the noun stem /pwaagan/. Uncertainty about the status of the vowel alternations appears to have served as the trigger for the restructuring of word stems, which lessens the need for speakers to learn the abstract patterns underlying the alternations. Noun and verb stems that historically began with a short vowel have been reanalyzed as beginning with a consonant. Nishnaabemwin speakers have reanalyzed the forms of word stems, in that for nouns the tendency is to take the singular form as the basic form, and add any prefixes to that form. Verb stems are subject to the same reanalysis.

The reanalysis of such forms has resulted in the creation of a new variant of the person prefix, /ndoo-/, and creates a more stable and learnable form of word stems for speakers by decreasing the amount of allomorphy that occurs in word stems. The new prefix is extended to other words as well, so that an alternative way of saying ‘my shoe’ is ndoo-mkizin; by convention a hyphen is written between the restructured prefixes and the following noun stem.

In other forms the third-person prefix is either completely missing, as in (a-c) below, or is realized only as the segment /d/ (examples d-g). For convenience the person prefix is written in bold in the table below.

Other innovating person prefixes have arisen by the same process of reinterpreting stems that historically begin with a vowel as consonant-initial. Stems that historically begin with /i-/ or /a-/ have led to the development of reanalyzed prefixes containing these vowels.

The person prefixes can then have the forms (a) ‘first person’: /n-/ or /nd-/ (the unreanalysed forms), /ndoo-/, /ndi-/, /nda-/; (b) ‘second person’: /g-/ or /gd-/ (the unreanalysed forms), /gdoo-/, /gdi-/, /gda-/; (c) /d-/ (the unreanalysed form), /doo-/, /di-/, /da-/. There is considerable inter-speaker variation in patterns of usage, with some speakers using the reanalyzed prefixes either sparingly, or not at all; other speakers using the reanalyzed prefixes only before stems that originally had a short vowel in their first syllable; and speakers who use the reanalyzed prefixes with stems that had a long vowel in their first syllable.