Grammar of the Ojibwe language
The Ojibwe language is an Algonquian North American indigenous language spoken throughout the Great Lakes region and westward onto the northern plains. It is one of the largest indigenous language 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. The orthography used is the Fiero Double-Vowel System.
Like many North American languages, Ojibwe is polysynthetic, meaning it exhibits a great deal of synthesis and a very high morpheme-to-word ratio (e.g., the single word for "they are Chinese" is "aniibiishaabookewininiiwiwag", which contains six morphemes: leaf-liquid-make-man-be-, or approximately "they are leaf-drink [i.e., tea] makers"). It is agglutinating, and thus builds up words by stringing morpheme after morpheme together, rather than having several affixes which carry numerous different pieces of information.
Like most Algonquian languages, Ojibwe distinguishes two different kinds of third person, a "proximate" and an "obviative". The proximate is a traditional third person, while the obviative (also frequently called "fourth person") marks a less important third person if more than one third person is taking part in an action. In other words, Ojibwe uses the obviative to avoid the confusion that could be created by English sentences such as "John and Bill were good friends, ever since the day he first saw him" (who saw whom?). In Ojibwe, one of the two participants would be marked as proximate (whichever one was deemed more important), and the other marked as obviative.
Gender.
The gender distinction in Ojibwe is not a masculine/feminine contrast, but is rather between animate and inanimate. Animate nouns are generally living things, and inanimate ones generally nonliving things, although that is not a simple rule because of the cultural understanding as to whether a noun possesses a "spirit" or not (generally, if it can move, it possesses a "spirit"). Objects with great spiritual importance for the Ojibwe, such as rocks, are very often animate rather than inanimate, for example. Some words are distinguished purely by their noun class; for example, "mitig", if it is animate (plural "mitigoog"), means "tree;" if it is inanimate (plural "mitigoon"), it means "stick."
Number.
Number in Ojibwe is a simple singular/plural contrast. Nouns and pronouns can be either singular or plural, and verbs inflect for the number of their subject and object, although some nouns and verbs lack singular forms. Plural forms differ from word to word depending on the word's gender, root, and historical stress. By examining the plural form of the word, one can generally determine the word's gender and root. Animate plurals end in "-g", while inanimate plural nouns (and obviative nouns) end in "-n". The underlying form of a root determines the "linking vowel" — the vowel that appears before the plural suffix ("-g" or "-n") but after the root itself.
Person.
There are seven Ojibwe inflectional categories expressing person/gender combinations for each of the two numbers (singular and plural). However, the singular and plural categories do not always exactly correspond. The total number of 14 "persons" arises from taking into consideration all the contrasts of animate/inanimate, proximate/obviative, and singular/plural.
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Characteristics of the resulting 14 persons are built into Ojibwe nouns and pronouns, thus dictating which verb forms would be used in speech. In nouns and verbs, all 14 forms of persons may or may not present themselves, as words are divided as either animate or inanimate genders and very few words exist as both, but all 14 forms of persons generally do appear with pronouns.
Pronouns.
Ojibwe pronouns, along with distinguishing singular and plural number and first, second, third, and fourth (obviative) persons, also carry a distinction between inclusive and exclusive first person plural. Pronouns may present themselves either as independent words or as series of prefixes and suffixes.
An "inclusive" first person plural indicates that the pronoun includes the addressee, i.e., "we including you" ("giinawind"). An "exclusive" first person plural indicates that the addressee is not included, i.e., "we excluding you" ("niinawind").
The other personal pronouns are the first singular "niin", second singular "giin", third singular "wiin", second plural "giinawaa", and third plural "wiinawaa".
Like the independent words, Ojibwe pronominal prefixes indicate first person with "n-", second person with "g-" and third person with "w-". However, the associated suffixes for these persons will be different depending on if the word is a verb or a noun.
In many Ojibwe-speaking communities, the first person prefix is used without the initial "n". Due to vowel syncope in some communities, those prefixes are further reduced without the initial "i". However, among Saulteaux communities, the first person prefix "nim-" and "nin-" are instead reduced to "ni-", "nind-" to "nid-" and "nindo-" to "nido-".
Ojibwe also has a set of demonstrative pronouns, distinguishing animate/inanimate, here/there/yonder/over here, singular/plural, and proximate/obviative. The demonstratives differ in their phonetic forms very significantly across Ojibwe dialects and communities, so this table, based on the Minnesota dialect of Southwestern Ojibwe, will not be entirely correct for many speakers:
Ojibwe also has a set of "indefinite" pronouns ("awiiya", "someone", "gegoo", "something," both of which can be preceded by "gaawiin" or "akina" to mean "no one, nothing" and "everyone, everything," respectively).
In contrast to the Southwestern Ojibwe's demonstrative pronouns, Central Ojibwe, Northwestern Ojibwe and Western Ojibwe—which includes a larger set of obviatives—have a larger set of demonstratives:
Verbs.
Ojibwe verbs mark information not only on the subject (their animacy, person, and plurality) but also on the object. There are several different classes of verbs in the language, which differ based on whether they are transitive or intransitive and whether they take animate or inanimate subjects. These are the main classes:
Verbs mark tenses with prefixes ("a'-", aorist past, "gii'-", simple past, "ga(d)-" and "da-", future, and "wii'-", desiderative future), but also can take a myriad of affixes known as "preverbs", which convey a great amount of additional information about an action. For example, the preverb "izhi-" means "in such a way," and so its addition to the verb root "-ayaa-", "to be," makes the verb "izhi-ayaa", "to be a certain way." The preverb "bimi-", "along," combines with the verb root "-batoo-", "to run," to form "bimibatoo", "to run along, run by." The preferred order of these prefixes are personal prefix, tense prefix, directional prefix, relative prefix, any number of preverbs, and finally the verb. In addition, the initial syllable may be modified by an initial vowel change or by an initial syllable reduplication.
Furthermore, there are three so-called "orders" of Ojibwe verbs. The basic one is called Independent Order, and is simply the indicative mood. There is also a Conjunct Order, which is most often used with verbs in subordinate clauses, in questions (other than simple yes–no questions), and with participles (participles in Ojibwe are verbal nouns, whose meaning is roughly equivalent to "someone who is (VERB), does (VERB)," for example, the word for "traveler," "bebaamaadizid", is the third singular conjunct of "babaamaadizi", "to travel about," and literally means "someone who travels about"). The final order is the Imperative Order, used with commands and corresponding to the imperative mood.
Negatives are generally introduced by the leading word "gaawiin", which is usually translated as "no," before introducing the actual words in their negative form. Negatives are generally formed by adding "sii" (or "zii") for independent order and "si" (or "zi") for conjunct order, both adding the negative element immediately after the root but before other suffixes. The "sii"/"si" are found after vowels while the "zii"/"zi" are found after "n". In some words, the final consonant is dropped and the "sii"/"si" are added to the remaining vowel, in other words the final "m" is converted to "n" before adding "zii"/"zi", yet in other words a linking vowel "i" (or "aa") is added after the final consonant and then the "sii"/"si" added. Imperatives do not follow the "sii" ("zii")/"si" ("zi") pattern.
There are three imperatives in Ojibwe: the "immediate" imperative, used to indicate that the action must be completely right away ("nibaan!", "Sleep (right now)!"), the "delayed" imperative, used to indicate that the action should be completely eventually, but not immediately ("nibaakan!", "Sleep (in a little bit)!"), and the "prohibitive" imperative, used to indicate that the action is prohibited ("(gego) nibaaken!", "Don't sleep!"). Like the negatives, the "k" in "-k", "-ken", "-keg" and "-kegon" take on the lenis form and become "g" after "n". Also like the negatives, the general the connector vowel between the imperative suffix and the terminal consonant here is "i"; however, for "k"/"g", the connector vowel instead is "o".
All verbs can also be marked for four "modes:" indicative (neutral), dubitative (the speaker is unsure about the validity of what they are saying, for example: "bakade", "he is hungry," but "bakadedog", "he must be hungry; he could be hungry"), preterit (which emphasizes that the action occurred in the past, and is also used to refer to attempted or intended but uncompleted actions, for example: "imaa ninamadab", "I'm sitting there," but "imaa ninamadabiban", "I was sitting there; I meant to sit there"), or preterit-dubitative (which expresses doubt about a past action: "imaa namadabigoban", "she must have sat there; she could have sat there").
Intransitives.
As an example of some of the Ojibwe verbal distinctions at work, consider the conjugation of positive and negative indicative long-vowel-final VAI verbs (using the example "nibaa", "to sleep"):
1 s following n becomes a z.
2 In Odaawaa, the final n is absent.
3 Instead of m, naawaa is used in Algonquin and Severn Ojibwe.
4 In Odaawaa and some Algonquin, yin is used instead of yan.
5 In Odaawaa, nh is used instead of n.
6 Instead of daa, daan is used by some Algonquin speakers, daag is used by some Saulteaux speakers, and ga-__min is used by some Severn Ojibwe and Saulteaux speakers.
7 Short vowels are lengthened before adding the suffix.
Also as an example of some of the Ojibwe verbal distinctions at work, consider the conjugation of positive and negative indicative long-vowel-final VII verbs (using the example "ozhaawashkwaa", "to blue"). Note that unlike VAI verbs, VII do not have imperatives:
 :1 s following n becomes a z.
2 In some words, a final w is present.
3 In Odaawaa, the final n is absent.
4 In Odaawaa, sinooni instead of sinini(w).
5 wan for vowel finals; oon for consonant finals.
6 In Odaawaa, vowel finals can take either wan or noon; in some North of Superior Ojibwe, wanoon is used.
7 In Odaawaa, gin instead of g.
Passives in intransitives can be expressed by using the marker igw, which may undergo a minor structural modification. Some examples of verb final containing the marker igw are:
Transitives.
Ojibwe, as with other Algonquian languages, also exhibits a direct–inverse system, in which transitive verbs are marked for whether or not the direction of the action follows a "topicality hierarchy" of the language. The topicality hierarchy in Ojibwe is 2 ; 1 ; X ; 3 ; 3’ ; 0, determined by 1) person, 2) gender, and 3) obviation. Ojibwe has no case distinctions among agent, patient and experiencer theta roles, so in a transitive verb with two participants, the only way to distinguish subject from object is through direct/inverse/goal suffixes.
"Note: C, N, nN, S and Y are used in some of the tables below to indicate a generic consonant, n\zh varying consonant, n\nzh varying consonant, s\sh varying consonant, and Ø\i varying palatializer, respectively."
The local goals, non-local goals and reflective cause the stem to undergo minor adjustments:
Transitive verbs can become VAI class of verbs by adding the actor-focused marker ige, which modifies the stem in a similar fashion as the marker igw. However, due to differences in dialects, how the actor-focused marker ige may show up differently.
For the first person and second person s, their s are specified if the words are in their Independent Order, and can also be known as local direct (first person ) and local inverse (second person ). A suffix indicates that the action is performed by someone higher on the person hierarchy on someone lower on the person hierarchy (e.g., by the addressee on the speaker, or by a proximate third person on an obviative):
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An inverse suffix indicates that the action is performed by someone lower on the person hierarchy on someone higher on the person hierarchy (e.g., by the speaker on the addressee, or by an obviative third person on a proximate):
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As can be seen, the only difference between