Algonquian Linguistics
Bloomfield’s work on Algonquian languages had both descriptive and comparative components. He published extensively on four Algonquian languages: Fox, Cree, Menominee, and Ojibwe, publishing grammars, lexicons, and text collections. Bloomfield used the materials collected in his descriptive work to undertake comparative studies leading to the reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian, with an early study reconstructing the sound system of Proto-Algonqian, and a subsequent more extensive paper refining his phonological analysis and adding extensive historical information on general features of Algonquian grammar.
Bloomfield undertook field research on Cree, Menominee, and Ojibwe, and analysed the material in previously published Fox text collections. His first Algonquian research, beginning around 1919, involved study of text collections in the Fox language that had been published by William Jones and Truman Michelson. Working through the texts in these collections, Bloomfield excerpted grammatical information to create a grammatical sketch of Fox. A lexicon of Fox based on his excerpted material was published posthumously.
Bloomfield undertook field research on Menominee in the summers of 1920 and 1921, with further brief field research in September 1939 and intermittent visits from Menominee speakers in Chicago in the late 1930s, in addition to correspondence with speakers during the same period. Material collected by Morris Swadesh in 1937 and 1938, often in response to specific queries from Bloomfield, supplemented his information. Significant publications include a collection of texts, a grammar and a lexicon (both published posthumously), in addition to a theoretically significant article on Menomini phonological alternations.
Bloomfield undertook field research in 1925 among Plains Cree speakers in Saskatchewan at the Sweet Grass reserve, and also at the Star Blanket reserve, resulting in two volumes of texts and a posthumous lexicon. He also undertook brief field work on Swampy Cree at The Pas, Manitoba. Bloomfield's work on Swampy Cree provided data to support the predictive power of the hypothesis of exceptionless phonological change.
Bloomfield's initial research on Ojibwe was through study of texts collected by William Jones, in addition to nineteenth century grammars and dictionaries. During the 1938 Linguistic Society of America Linguistic Institute held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, he taught a field methods class with Andrew Medler, a speaker of the Ottawa dialect who was born in Saginaw, Michigan but spent most of his life on Walpole Island, Ontario. The resulting grammatical description, transcribed sentences, texts, and lexicon were published posthumously in a single volume. In 1941 Bloomfield worked with Ottawa dialect speaker Angeline Williams at the 1941 Linguistic Institute held at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, resulting in a posthumously published volume of texts.
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