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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
glossing in a grammar, May 10, 2006
This review is from: Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar (Paperback)
I appreciate Eddyshaw's comments very much. But it is not merely to suppress "data-mining" that I chose to use the format of examples that I did. The problem with morpheme-by-morpheme glosses of the sort that linguists are used to is that they take up an _incredible_ amount of space in a paper text. The grammar as it stands is 1100 pages, and has about 5000 examples. If I had expanded the examples to include morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, it would have been at least 3000 pages. Given dimensions of this sort, one has to ask: what is more important, to make the examples reasonably accessible to language learners and scholars familiar with other Algonquian languages, or to make them accessible to someone with _no_ knowledge of Algonquian? Since my goal was to make my work useful to teachers and learners of Nishnaabemwin, I feel I had no choice but to go with the former strategy. How could anyone writing a grammar of a North American aboriginal language not seek to make that grammar accessible to heritage teachers and learners of that language? What would be the point of such an exercise? The other criticism, that the grammar is redundant because it includes information about general linguistic principles, must be mitigated by a consideration of the best grammars of _English_ produced in the last 20 years, e.g., the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language -- they have copious notes to help non-linguists access their hearts, as they should. Any grammar that requires a degree in linguistics to read is a sad exercise in the pedantic. Even writers of English grammars don't assume such knowledge, nor should they.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Resource, December 13, 2011
This review is from: Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar (Paperback)
There are lots of ways to approach learning a language and it's probably most helpful to try out as many as you can. For Nishnaabemwin, the grammar approach seems the most off-putting for most people. It seems daunting in its complexity. In addition, Valentine's grammar book is a +1000 page tome, and just THAT makes you want to chew your fingernails. Still, grammar shows patterns within the language. Once you know them, your learning can proceed in big logarithmic strides (as opposed to mincing linear learning word by word). Valentine's grammar is a reference manual so you don't have to read it all, or in order. He's made it fairly easy to look up and find the issue you're considering. Grammar isn't for everyone, but if you have even a mild inclination toward it, this book is really helpful. I also loved the insights into the culture of our people that comes through the language - which Valentine presents throughout the book. Its really impressive how much work, time, respect, and expansiveness has gone into compiling this book.
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7 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Detailed grammar of Eastern Ojibwe/Ottawa, March 20, 2005
This review is from: Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar (Paperback)
It's good to see such an elaborate and lengthy reference grammar of an indigenous North American language, and in many respects this is an excellent book. I do have a number of reservations in recommending it, however. A lot of the more disconcerting aspects of this book relate to the fact that the intended primary readership is native speakers intending to teach the language. One hopes indeed that it will find many such readers and help greatly in the preservation of Nishnaabemwin. A proper review from such a reader would be much more valuable than anything from me. This means that the book is aimed primarily at a readership with little linguistic prior knowledge but considerable knowledge of Ojibwe. In the first case, this leads to a lot of what to a linguist will seem like padding, and to a rather diffuse and repetitive structure. There is less actual content in this long book than at first appears. It also accounts for frequent pats on the back for the language in having such an extensive lexicon, complex structure, etc. No modern linguist needs to be told this about any natural language. Particularly disconcerting is the revelation in the introduction that the book, at the request of native speakers, has been deliberately made more difficult for linguists by the omission of e.g. morpheme-by-morpheme glosses, to prevent "knowledge mining". Given that Algonquian linguistics would not exist and a book like this would be impossible without the prior labours of humble "knowledge miners" this seems ungrateful. It is likely (unfortunately) to prove something of an own goal in the future if the supply of potential teachers with full competence in Eastern Ojibwe shrinks even further. This makes the chapters on derivational morphology especially unhelpful; they amount to not much more than long lists of unanalyzed forms. The best part of the book IMHO is the treatment of syntax, avowedly incomplete though it is. There's a lot to get one's knowledge-mining teeth into here.
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