Blackfoot

IP Zurich

Blackfoot is one of the most divergent languages of the Algonquian family spoken across Canada and the United States.

Even though there have been studies on individual aspects of three-participant clauses in particular Algonquian languages, this still is a largely unexplored area from a comparative perspective. The direct-inverse opposition in Blackfoot shows details of syntactic and discourse patterns that deserve more attention in order to arrive at a more thorough understading of inversion and obviation in Algonquian. This language further appears to consist of distinct regional varieties, and this project will hopefully shed light on the same three questions mentioned for Mapudungun, in addition to providing a clearer picture as to dialectal differences.