Chippewa Grammar Project for Southwestern Chippewa Dialect

FAIN: FN-50012-06

David Robert Treuer
University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN 55455-2009)

This is a collaborative project between Dr. David Treuer (University of Minnesota) and Dr. Anton Treuer (Bemidji State University). Together they will record Chippewa language speakers from the St. Croix, Mille Lacs, Leech Lake, and Red Lake Reservations in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Creative recording protocols will be used in order to capture as many of the nuances of the major variants of Southwestern Chippewa and to ensure the recordings include the verb forms and inflections that one does not hear in everyday speech. Recording and translating will occupy the researchers for 12 months after which their findings will be compiled into a two-volume series. The first volume will be the first and only Chippewa language grammar, the second volume will include many of the original recordings and will function as a grammar companion, where researchers and language learners can see the grammar and syntax in play. The material will be made available as an Internet-based database and the grammar book will be the first of its kind for this threatened language. (Edited by staff)