Michif is an endangered language spoken by approximately a few hundred Métis people, mostly located in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada. Michif is usually categorized as a mixed language (Bakker 1997; Thomason 2003), due to the inability to trace it back to a single language family, with the majority of verbal elements coming from Plains Cree (Algonquian) and the majority of nominal elements coming from French (Indo-European). This book investigates Bakker’s (1997) often cited claim that the morphology of each source language is not reduced, with the language combining full French noun phrase ... More

Michif is an endangered language spoken by approximately a few hundred Métis people, mostly located in Manitoba and Saskatchewan, Canada. Michif is usually categorized as a mixed language (Bakker 1997; Thomason 2003), due to the inability to trace it back to a single language family, with the majority of verbal elements coming from Plains Cree (Algonquian) and the majority of nominal elements coming from French (Indo-European). This book investigates Bakker’s (1997) often cited claim that the morphology of each source language is not reduced, with the language combining full French noun phrase grammar and Plains Cree verbal grammar. The book focuses on the syntax and semantics of the French-source noun phrase. While Michif has features that are obviously due to heavy contact with French (two mass/count systems, two plural markers, two gender systems), the Michif noun phrase mainly behaves like an Algonquian noun phrase. Even some of the French morphosyntax that it borrowed is used to Algonquianize non-Algonquian borrowings: the French-derived articles are only required on non-Algonquian nouns, and are used to make non-Algonquian borrowings visible to the Algonquian syntax. Michif is thus shown to be best characterized as an Algonquian language, with heavy French borrowing. With such a quintessentially ‘mixed’ language shown to essentially not mix grammars, the usefulness of this category for analysing synchronic patterns is questioned, much in the same way that scholars such as DeGraff (2000, 2003, 2005) and Mufwene (1986, 2001, 2008, 2015) question the usefulness of the creole language classification.