Ojibwe Phonology - Phonological Processes

Phonological Processes

A defining characteristic of several of the more eastern dialects is that they exhibit a great deal of vowel syncope, the deletion of vowels in certain positions within a word. In some dialects (primarily Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe), all unstressed vowels are lost (see above for a discussion of Ojibwe stress). In other dialects (such as some dialects of Central Ojibwe), short vowels in initial syllables are lost, but not in other unstressed syllables. For example, the word oshkinawe ("young man") of Algonquin and Southwestern Ojibwe (stress: oshkínawé) is shkinawe in some dialects of Central Ojibwe and shkinwe in Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa. Regular, pervasive syncope is a comparatively recent development, arising in the past eighty years or so.

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 ). There are also some morphophonemic alternations where root-final -s changes to -sh (indicated with <S>) and where root-final -n changes to -nzh (indicated with <nN>).

In some dialects, obstruents become voiceless/fortis after the tense preverbs gii- (past) and wii- (future/desiderative). In such dialects, for example, gii-baapi, "s/he laughed", becomes (often spelled gii-paapi).