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Golden Lake Algonquin: A Preliminary Report

George F. Aubin Assumption College

This past summer, under an Urgent Ethnology Contract from the National Museums of Canada, I did fieldwork in Golden Lake, Ontario, on the phonology of Golden Lake Algonquin. Golden Lake Algonquin appears to be a dying language: as a general rule, the small number of living speakers are over seventy years of age, some of them in poor health, and most use English in their daily lives to the virtual exclusion of Algonquin. Although a woman from Maniwaki who has resided in Golden Lake for over twenty years has been engaged to teach Algonquin language classes in the Day-Care Center, use of the local dialect is highly restricted, confined to this small group of elderly speakers.

My principal Golden Lake informant was Mike Bernard, now 72 years of age, from whom I obtained a good deal of material. In addition, I worked briefly with two other Golden Lake speakers, one 59 years old, the youngest speaker I located, and one 82 years old and confined to a wheelchair. In order to obtain potentially interesting comparative information, I also worked with the woman teacher from Maniwaki, who sometimes pointed out differences, primarily lexical, she had noticed between the Golden Lake and Maniwaki dialects.

Research in Golden Lake Algonquin is important if one considers the recent findings of researchers such as Rhodes, Piggott, and Kaye from their work with other Algonquin and Ojibwa groups, where considerable dialect variation is apparent. My work thus far indicates that Golden Lake Algonquin is interesting from several points of view; a number of traits distinguish it, for example, from the closely related dialect of Maniwaki. It now seems clear that Golden Lake Algonquin can add some important information to our knowledge of the Algonquin-Ojibwa dialect situation, helping us fill in a small part of the Algonquin-Ojibwa picture.

What follows is a brief preliminary report of my research on Golden Lake Algonquin. I present here in no particular order of importance a number of what on the basis of reports on other Algonquin dialects appear to be potentially inter­esting aspects of this dialect, limiting my comments to phonology, the focus of my investigation. Much of what I will discuss is familiar to anyone with some knowledge of Algonquin and/or Ojibwa dialects and is, I think, non-controversial. What makes Golden Lake interesting is not, then, any particular characteristic, which can often be found quite easily elsewhere, but rather the picture that is beginning to emerge suggesting that Golden Lake shares some features with more Ojibwa-like dialects and other features with more Algonquin-like dialects, although more work will be necessary before a definitive stance can be taken on this matter. Some of what I will present will no doubt need some revision as further information becomes available; in

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particular, I plan to continue my fieldwork at Golden Lake in early 1979.

Vowel Quality 1. The most immediately noticeable characteristic of Golden Lake Algonquin on the phonological level is the backed quality of the low non-front long vowel, most instances of which appear to come from PA *a: [cTman] 'boat' [kaSkizi] 'he scratches'

[wabArj] 'tomorrow' [nan An] 'five' [wabi] 'white' [wTyas] 'meat'

The short counterpart of long a does not share to the same degree this characteristic backing, but it varies in quality from a low central to a backed higher-low central vowel.

[animuS] 'dog' [mAs"kT] 'forest, bush' [pTnan] 'clean' [amikwAg] 'beavers' [akwTwan] 'it's heavy' [iikanAn] 'horns'

Vowel Deletion 2. As in other Algonquin dialects, word-initial unstressed lax vowels are generally retained in Golden Lake:

[animus] 'dog' [okun] 'liver' [ikwe] 'woman' [uStigwan] 'head'

Interestingly, my Maniwaki informant gave both [ikwe] and [kwe] 'woman', the latter form showing deletion of the initial unstressed vowel. In both Maniwaki and Golden Lake, the word for 'on high, up above', [Spimin,], showed consistent deletion of an expected word-initial lax i_.

Again, as in other Algonquin dialects, a group of nouns in Golden Lake show the singular ending -I. One form, however, the word for 'stone', does not have the expected final vowel, although it clearly has an Algonquin-type plural. It may be that the singular form has been influenced by or borrowed from Ojibwa, since there is a related form which does show the expected final vowel: [asm] 'stone' [asinTg] 'stones'

[masmT] 'stone' [masmiwAn] 'stones' Vowel Nasalization 3. Another interesting feature of Golden Lake Algonquin is vowel nasalization, a topic that generated a good deal of debate not too long ago in terms of its origin and spread in Eastern Algonquin languages. Even though the Golden Lake situation is not unlike what occurs in a number of related dialects, vowel nasalization is obtrusive and pervasive enough that I would like to discuss it briefly here.

Not unexpectedly, vowels followed by nasals in the same syllable are (slightly) nasalized in Golden Lake, as in the following examples:

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[nTn] T ' [mar)] Toon' [kin] 'you' [pirjgwT] 'sand'

The locative suffix, for example, always shows vowel nasal­ization :

[ninoJiwTn] 'in my mouth' [sTwanun] 'in the south' [ kici-gAm i rj ] 'in the sea' [nibTrj] 'in the water'

The final velar nasal in these and other Golden Lake forms is quite unexceptional, coming from a sequence of nasal plus voiced velar stop. After assimilation of the nasal to the stop, the stop is deleted. More importantly, Golden Lake has a number of phonetically nasal vowels, as the following examples show:

[azaye] 'now' [ kTgoz ] 'fish' [ninozi] T am standing'[sfsibakwAd] 'sugar'

The diminutive suffix is particularly interesting in this regard. Its underlying form appears to be /-Vns/, with strong nasalization of the vowel and deletion of the nasal.

[kwTuses] 'boy' [magakwados] 'hatchet' [ikwesTs] 'girl' [Ikudes] 'match' [anikoses] 'small star'

The following two ordered rules, vowel-nasalization and nasal deletion, can account for these facts:

1. V -»• [ + nasal] / N in same syllable

2. 1 2 3 V N C ;> 1 0 3

[+ nasal] [+ continuant]

Nasal-deletion is necessarily restricted to the environment before continuants to account for forms such as [mao ], Toon', which shows a nasalized vowel but retention of the nasal before the underlying stop, which, as stated above, is itself subsequently deleted.

/ma ng/=^>[ marj ] Toon'

Consonant Voicing 4. As a general rule, lenis consonants in initial position appear to be voiceless in Golden Lake, as in the following examples:

[sTbT] 'river' [cTman] 'boat' [STSTb] 'duck' [kTzis] 'sun'

A small number of forms in my data do not appear to undergo initial-consonant devoicing, suggesting that this rule may be optional at least in some cases:

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[gudasw A] 'six [ babokwawamTr) gTzis] 'April' [da-] 'future'

This rule does not apply to lenis consonants in intervocalic position, where there is some variation between voiced and voiceless, but where voicing appears to be the more general case :

[kici-zTbT] Targe river' [kici-jTman] Targe boat'

In contrast to the general devoicing of lenis consonants in initial position, lenis consonants remain voiced in final position in Golden Lake:

[STSTb] 'duck' [nTz] 'two' [(a)moz] 'moose' [amikwAg] 'beavers'

Tense/Lax Alternation 5. It is clear from my data that Golden Lake has singular and plural allomorphs for a number of nouns whose singular ends in a tense -I, with a lax i_ plus w in the plural:

[ wawas'kes'T ] [ wawas" keS I w Ag ] 'deer' [SlrjgusT] [ Si rjgu s I w Ag ] 'weasel' [masmT] [masiniwAn] 'stone' [ininT] [inmiWAg] 'man'

Piggott (1978:172-173) has discussed the difficulty of accounting for this tense vowel/lax vowel alternation through a phonological rule, suggesting that it is probably more appropriate to assume that restructuring has resulted in two partially suppletive stems, both of which must be listed. My data from Golden Lake are not complete enough to choose between a phonological solution and Piggott's suggestion, so i consider the question still open.

W-Deletion 6. Finally, there is a curious rule of w-deletion in numerals that my data indicate is optional. In the following pairs of numbers, the forms on the right have undergone w-deletion:

[gudaswA] [gudasA] 'six' [nTzaswA] [nTzasA] 'seven' [niSaswA] [niSasA] 'eight' [neuaswA] [neuasft] 'nine' [midaswA] [midasA] 'ten'

It is interesting to note that forms showing operation of this rule were considered less 'correct' and more 'familiar' than the forms with [w]. Richard Rhodes has pointed out to me that this rule is almost certainly related to the rule found in a number of Algonquian and Ojibwa dialects deleting [w] after non-velar consonants.

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REFERENCES

DAVIAULT, D., M. Dufresne, S. Girouard, J. Kaye, P. Legault 1978 L'algonquin du nord. Pp. 55-60 in Papers of the

Ninth Algonquian Conference, William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University.

Glyne Algonquin and other Ojibwa dialects: a preliminary report. Pp. 160-87 in Papers of the Ninth Algonquian Conference, William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University.

RHODES, Richard 1976 A preliminary report on the dialects of eastern

Ojibwa-Odawa. Pp. 129-156 in Papers of the Seventh Algonquian Conference, William Cowan, ed. Ottawa: Carleton University.

PIGGOTT, 1978