Nishnaabemwin Text-Dictionary Linking

FAIN: FN-291243-23

Dustin Bowers
Unaffiliated independent scholar

Annotating words that appear in a corpus of Nishnaabemwin, a native language of Canada and the USA, to their entries in an online bilingual dictionary, and building a search function for both.

Link the words in a collection of Nishnaabemwin texts to their entries in an online bilingual dictionary. The Nishnaabemwin dialects of Ojibwe (Algonquian, Great Lakes region, ISO codes otw, ojg) are moribund, but there is great community interest in teaching tools. This project will link the texts associated with the Algonquian Dictionary Project's online dictionary of Nishnaabemwin (based at Carleton University), so that language learners can search for words in the dictionary and immediately see examples of words in use. The PI has carried out pilot work producing glossaries for texts from M'Chigeeng First Nation (Corbiere 2019, Armstrong et al 2022). These texts and others may be added to the corpus. Additionally, the linking process furnishes naturalistic data to better understand the reaction to a vowel deletion rule that emerged in the early 20th century, and the existence of a linked corpus is a major benefit for further lexicographic and grammatical work.

Associated Products

Nishnaabemwin Analysis (Web Resource)
Title: Nishnaabemwin Analysis
Author: Dustin Bowers
Abstract: This tool performs grammatical analysis of text in Nishnaabemwin (an Algonquian language spoken in the Great Lakes region) and makes a variety of functions derived from that analysis available to the general public. Sample sentences of Nishnaabemwin are provided, as well as a searchable collection of sentences.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://bowersd.github.io/textAnalysis/
Primary URL Description: A site that performs grammatical analysis on Nishnaabemwin text.

M'Chigeeng Dbaajmowinan (Web Resource)
Title: M'Chigeeng Dbaajmowinan
Author: Alan Corbiere
Author: Raymond Armstrong
Author: Delasie Tokornoo
Author: Dustin Bowers
Author: Holden Madagame
Author: Lewis Debassige
Author: Johnny Debassige
Author: Alvin Ted Corbiere
Author: Elizabeth Panamick
Author: Evelyn Roy
Author: Albertine Migwans
Author: Rene Cada
Author: Jim Panamick
Abstract: These pages display stories recorded, transcribed and translated by Alan Corbiere and the Anishinaabemowin Revival Program at M’Chigeeng First Nation. Each Nishnaabemwin sentence is accompanied by an English translation, and beneath it, a detailed ‘interlinear’ analysis. It is our hope that by making these analyses available, learners of Nishnaabemwin can have an easier time understanding what is going on in a sentence. This might just mean getting a sense for which word means what, or you could figure out how to properly modify words with suffixes and prefixes (and combine the words into a sentence!).
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://nishnaabemwin.algonquianlanguages.ca/stories/
Primary URL Description: Fully analyzed stories in Nishnaabemwin from M'Chigeeng First Nation.

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