Ojibwe Grammar - Person

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.

Animate gender (singular)
  • X — unspecified actor
  • 1 — first person singular
  • 2 — second person singular
  • 3 — third person, animate
  • 3’ — animate obviative, or fourth person, animate
    • 3’’ — third person animate, possessed by obviative
 Animate gender (plural)
  • 1p — first person plural, exclusive
  • 21 — first person plural, inclusive
  • 2p — second person plural
  • 3p — third person plural, animate
  • 3’p — third person plural, animate obviative, or animate fourth person proximate plural
 Inanimate gender
  • 0 — third person singular, inanimate
  • 0’ — third person singular, inanimate obviative
  • 0p — third person plural, inanimate
  • 0’p — third person plural, inanimate obviative

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.

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