Texte remanié de: Diss.--Amsterdam, 1992. / Bibliogr. p. 287-304. Index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1992. / Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1992. / DatabaseEbrary. Includes bibliographical references and index.

Michif is a mixed language spoken in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota in which the majority of the noun phrase is derived from French and the verb phrase is derived from Cree. This thesis provides an analysis of the structure of the determiner phrase (DP) in Michif, based on data from The Michif dictionary: Turtle Mountain Chippewa Cree, by Patline Laverdure and Ida Rose Allard (1983). Even though the majority of the DP is French, Cree contributes demonstratives and quantifiers. This thesis examines the use of articles, quantifiers and discontinuous constituents(where part of the DP appears to the left of the verb and the remainder is on the right). The syntax of the Michif DP is mixed, which two syntaxes at work in which the French-derived DP is embedded within the Cree-derived DP.

The purpose of the thesis is two-fold: to document the results of a language survey of Northern Métis languages which examines the language practices and attitudes of those Northern Métis people who participated, and to reflect upon the research process by examining the assumptions I bring to the research and my role and the role of other Masters level researchers in language revitalization projects. The research presented here has been conducted within the Community-based language revitalization (CBLR) research model (Czaykowska-Higgins 2009), a model which can be a powerful way to frame linguistic research and which is increasingly called upon when undertaking language revitalization projects. This thesis addresses the application of CBLR practices to a language revitalization project undertaken in collaboration with the North Slave Métis Alliance in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Along with positioning myself in the research, I provide an in-depth description of the historical, political, and social landscape in which the research takes place. My epistemologies and the CBLR model are informed by feminist and Native American methodologies, as well as participatory, participatory-action and action frameworks. Through this lens, I reflect on the academic context of language revitalization and offer my own model of collaborative language research which builds upon work done by Leonard & Haynes (2010). Applying this model, I present the results of the North Slave Métis Language Survey, conducted in 2013 in collaboration with the North Slave Métis Alliance. This thesis contributes to the body of work on Métis languages, and is the first to thoroughly examine and document the language practices of Métis people of the NWT. It also contributes to the growing body of work on CBLR research. / Graduate

Drawing data from a variety of sources, this thesis compares functional evidence regarding lexical categories from a number of Salish and Wakashan languages, as well as from the Michif language. It then applies Prototype Theory to examine the structure of the lexicons of these languages. They are described in terms of prototype categories that overlap to varying extents, with each category and each area of overlap defined by a central set of prototypical features. A high degree of gradience appears to exist between categories in Salish and Wakashan languages, with no clear boundary between categories or areas of overlap, indicating that lexical categories in these languages, rather than being clearly demarcated, are instead fuzzy categories with very little distinguishing them. Categories in Michif, on the other hand, exhibit far less overlap. This variation is compared to variation in conceptual categories across languages, and challenges the notions of the universality of clearly demarcated lexical categories and the existence of separately stored language module in the human mind. In spite of the variation in lexical category demarcation observed across the languages studied, it is possible to demarcate the categories of Noun and Verb to at least some extent in all languages, as well as a category of Adjective in some languages. This supports the proposed universality of the categories of Noun and Verb, as well as the implicational universals proposed in the Amsterdam Model of Parts of Speech (Hengeveld 1992a, b). It is also possible to identify a number of defining characteristics for each lexical category that appear to hold across languages. Since similar characteristics can be identified across languages for all categories, but the categories themselves display varying degrees of overlap in individual languages, this research supports the proposal that language universals, rather than consisting of structures, rules, and categories that are identical in all languages, are rather collections of prototypical characteristics for grammatical categories that are similar across languages (Croft 2000).