Blackfoot Grammar

Blackfoot Grammar
Author: Donald G. Frantz
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2015-02-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1442658282

Thousands of people in Alberta and Montana speak Blackfoot, an Algonquian language. But the numbers are diminishing and the survival of Blackfoot is in some danger. To help preserve the language while it is still in daily use, Donald G. Frantz and Norma Jean Russell collaborated on the Blackfoot Dictionary, published in 1989 to widespread acclaim and later revised in 1995. Blackfoot Grammar, the companion volume to the dictionary, has now also been updated with a second edition. The changes made to each chapter reflect new approaches refined through years of teaching experience. New chapters on 'Numbers and Enumeration' and 'Translating from English to Blackfoot' have been added, as well as new exercises and two new appendixes describing the phonetics of Blackfoot and the design of the alphabet. This second edition of Blackfoot Grammar will be a welcome update not only for those who wish to learn the language, but for all those with an interest in Native Studies and North American linguistics.

The Blackfoot Dictionary of Stems, Roots, and Affixes

The Blackfoot Dictionary of Stems, Roots, and Affixes
Author: Donald G. Frantz
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 524
Release: 2017-01-01
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1487520638

The Blackfoot Dictionary is a comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of Blackfoot. This third edition of the critically acclaimed dictionary adds more than 1,100 new entries, major additions to verb stems, and the inclusion of vai, vii, vta, and viti syntactic categories.

Outline for a Comparative Grammar of Some Algonquian Languages

Outline for a Comparative Grammar of Some Algonquian Languages
Author: Joshua Jacob Snider
Publisher:
Total Pages: 128
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: Algonquian languages
ISBN: 9780615384023

[See http: //mundartpress.wordpress.com/2013/10/02/outline-for-a-comparativ/ to print a double sided insert additions page] This is a translation of a comparative grammar of five Algonquian Native American languages first published in Dutch in 1910. Although too short to represent a comprehensive grammar of these languages, it treats most parts of speech and is a good solid introduction to many of the major important morphological features of this family and the languages treated. It has been expanded, corrected and improved in the form of translators notes based on much more recent and complete material. It also includes many bibliographical resources for most of the Algonquian language family, which are geared towards comparative language learning methods. The two most widely spoken languages of this group, Ojibway (frequently spelled Chippewa, Ojibwa or Ojibwe) and Cree, are both examples of the close knit Central Algonquian group, while Micmac (also spelled Mi'kmaq and Mi'gmaw) and the extinct Natick belong to the Eastern group. The western Blackfoot is usually placed with the Plains Algonquian group, but it is the most divergent member of the entire family and has roughly as many speakers as Micmac

Blackfoot Religion and the Consequences of Cultural Commoditization

Blackfoot Religion and the Consequences of Cultural Commoditization
Author: Kenneth Hayes Lokensgard
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2016-04-15
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1317173805

This book explores the exchange of Blackfoot "medicine bundles" within contemporary Blackfoot culture and between the Blackfoot Peoples and Euro-Americans. These ceremonial bundles, which are circulated as gifts in their native context, are robbed of their statuses as living beings or persons, when they are treated as symbolic objects or commodities by cultural outsiders. Much of the original, ethnographic data presented in this book deals with the attempts of some Blackfeet to repatriate ceremonial materials from Euro-American hands. This book represents a valuable study of contemporary Blackfoot religion as well as the repatriation movement. Kenneth Lokensgard also contributes to the studies of material culture and exchange; central to his investigation is the critical examination and reapplication of the interpretative terms "gift" and "commodity." Careful use of these terms, Lokensgard argues, can better help scholars appreciate how different peoples perceive the worlds they inhabit.

Retelling Trickster in Naapi's Language

Retelling Trickster in Naapi's Language
Author: Nimachia Howe
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 179
Release: 2019-10-18
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1607329794

Retelling Trickster in Naapi’s Language is an examination of Nitsitapiisinni (Blackfoot) origin stories about one of the most powerful and unpredictable of the early creators in Niitsitapii consciousness and chronology: Naapi. Through in-depth linguistic analysis, Nimachia Howe reinterprets the earliest references to Naapi, offering a more authentic understanding of his identity and of the meanings and functions of the stories in which he appears. Naapi is commonly and inaccurately categorized by Western scholars as a trickster figure. Research on him is rife with misnomers and repeated misinterpretations, many resulting from untranslatable terms and concepts, comparisons with the binary tenets of “good” vs. “bad,” and efforts by Niitsitapii storytellers to protect the stories. The five stories included in their entirety in this volume present Naapi’s established models of reciprocity, connection, kinship, reincarnation, and offerings, shown in descriptions of, and predictions for, the balance between life and death, the rising and setting of planets, wind directions and forces, and the cyclical nature of animals, birds, plants, glaciers, and rivers. Retelling Trickster in Naapi’s Language will be of interest to students and scholars of Native American studies, ethnography, folklore, environmental philosophy, and Indigenous language, literature, and religion.

Casebook in Functional Discourse Grammar

Casebook in Functional Discourse Grammar
Author: J. Lachlan Mackenzie
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2013-09-06
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027271585

This book provides ten case studies in Functional Discourse Grammar (FDG), a typologically-oriented theory of the organization of natural languages that has risen to prominence in recent years. The authors, all committed practitioners of FDG, include Kees Hengeveld, the intellectual father of the theory, who shows how it offers a radically new approach to constituent ordering. Other themes covered are evidentiality, modality, adpositions, verb morphology, possession, raising, sequence of tenses, semi-fixed constructions and prelinguistic conceptualization. The volume contains an introduction that explains the rudiments of FDG and summarizes the ten remaining chapters. The Casebook moves on from Hengeveld & Mackenzie’s (2008) Functional Discourse Grammar to show how the theory is applied to linguistic problems new and old. The languages treated are Blackfoot, Dutch, English, Spanish, Welsh, indigenous languages of Brazil, and many others.

The Persistence of Language

The Persistence of Language
Author: Shannon T. Bischoff
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 472
Release: 2013-05-28
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027272247

This edited collection presents two sets of interdisciplinary conversations connecting theoretical, methodological, and ideological issues in the study of language. In the first section, Approaches to the study of the indigenous languages of the Americas, the authors connect historical, theoretical, and documentary linguistics to examine the crucial role of endangered language data for the development of biopsychological theory and to highlight how methodological decisions impact language revitalization efforts. Section two, Approaches to the study of voices and ideologies, connects anthropological and documentary linguistics to examine how discourses of language contact, endangerment, linguistic purism and racism shape scholarly practice and language policy and to underscore the need for linguists and laypersons alike to acquire the analytical tools to deconstruct discourses of inequality. Together, these chapters pay homage to the scholarship of Jane H. Hill, demonstrating how a critical, interdisciplinary linguistics narrows the gap between disparate fields of analysis to treat the ecology of language in its entirety.