Ottawa Dialect - History of Scholarship

History of Scholarship

Explorer Samuel de Champlain was the first European to record an encounter with Ottawa speakers when he met a party of three hundred Ottawas in 1615 on the north shore of Georgian Bay. French missionaries, particularly members of the Society of Jesus and the Récollets order, documented several dialects of Ojibwe in the 17th and 18th centuries, including unpublished manuscript Ottawa grammatical notes, word lists, and a dictionary. In the 19th century, Ottawa speaker Andrew Blackbird wrote a history of the Ottawa people that included a description of Ottawa grammatical features. The first linguistically accurate work was Bloomfield's description of Ottawa as spoken at Walpole Island, Ontario. The Odawa Language Project at the University of Toronto, led by Kaye and Piggott, conducted field work in Ottawa communities on Manitoulin Island in the late 1960s and early 1970s, resulting in a series of reports on Ottawa linguistics. Piggott also prepared a comprehensive description of Ottawa phonology. Rhodes produced a study of Ottawa syntax, a dictionary, and a series of articles on Ottawa grammar. Valentine has published a comprehensive descriptive grammar, a volume of texts including detailed analysis, as well as a survey of Ojibwe dialects that includes extensive description and analysis of Ottawa dialect features.