Synopses & Reviews
The Michif language -- spoken by descendants of French Canadian fur traders and Cree Indians in western Canada -- is considered an "impossible language" since it uses French for nouns and Cree for verbs, and comprises two different sets of grammatical rules. Bakker uses historical research and fieldwork data to present the first detailed analysis of this language and how it came into being.
Review
"Bakker offers us here a thorough grammatical description of the hybrid Michif language, including a pointed discussion of the Ojibwe substratum in its Cree component. There are two well-organized indexes and a wealth of references and comparisons with other cases of linguistic mixtures worldwide."--
Anthropological LinguisticsReview
"Bakker's work is of great originality and erudition--and even greater ambition: there has been no comparable attempt to deal with an issue that is so intractable and at the same time of such surpassing interest for the theory of language contact and linguistic theory itself."--H.C. Wolfart, University of Manitoba
"A major contribution, this book presents a sensible, intensively researched solution to a problem that has long challenged scholars....Linguists, historians, and all students of Métis culture and history will be much in debt to Peter Bakker for his analytical breakthroughs in this field."--Jennifer S.H. Brown, University of Winnipeg
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 287-304) and indexes.