A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

‘someone’s fingernail’ (see Nichols and Nyholm 1995:xxv for full discussion of this
convention).
The consonants consist of six lenis consonants, which often occur voiced at the
word-initially, word-medially, and show devoicing word-finally: b, d, g, j, z, zh [b, d, g,
ʤ, z, ʒ]; their six fortis counterparts, which are voiceless and geminate (though not
orthographically represented as such): p, t, k, ch, s, sh [pː, tː, kː, ʧː, sː, ʃː]; two nasals:
m, n [m, n]; two glides: w, y [w, j]; and two glottal consonants: h, ’ [h, Ɂ] (see also
Nichols and Nyholm 1995:xxvi-xxviii for more discussion).
The use of the double vowel orthography within this thesis represents a break from
the traditional orthography used by others in earlier work on Ojibwe. For example, in his
dissertation titled Ojibwe Morphology, Nichols largely followed Leonard Bloomfield’s
orthography which made the relationship between lenis (voiced, short) and fortis
consonants (voiceless, long) morphologically transparent, representing the lenis
consonants p, t, k, c, s, š as orthographically doubled in the representation of the fortis
consonants pp, tt, kk, cc, ss, š. This had the advantage of showing the morphological
relationship argued to exist between lenis and fortis consonants in Ojibwe and its various
dialects, namely, that the juxtaposition of two identical lenis consonants as a result of
some morphological or phonological process results in the formation of a fortis consonant
(see Valentine 2001:76-78, Bloomfield 1958:viii, but see also Hockett’s forward in
Bloomfield 1958 where he argues for the analysis of fortis consonants as clusters, rather
than as single phonemes). While the representations of short and long vowels remain
identical to Nichols’s treatment (e.g. doubled vowels to show long vowel length), the use
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