Michif: Towards a Unified Phonology

Abstract

This thesis addresses questions regarding the phonologies of mixed languages. Virtually all mixed languages, composed of a grammar language and lexifier language, use the phonology of the grammar language. This thus led to the hypothesis that the grammar language provides the phonology since phonology is part of the grammar. Here, we can understand grammar as referring to the rule systems of a language, whether that be syntactic rules or phonological rules. Some scholars have put forth the claim that the French-Cree mixed language Michif stands as a counterexample to this hypothesis. They instead analyze its phonology as being split, with French-source words obeying French phonology rules and Cree-source words obeying Cree phonology rules. In this thesis, I examine stress assignment processes, liaison consonants, sibilant harmony, and vowel length in Michif in order to see if these phonological processes operate uniformly across all words or if there is evidence for stratification based on source language. My findings are that these phonological processes do operate uniformly across all words in the language, regardless of source language, leading to the conclusion that Michif’s phonology is not split. Furthermore, I show that some of the phonological rules in Michif come from French while others come from Cree. This raises interesting questions about how Michif’s phonology was formed and evolved over time.