LWM 503: A Grammar of Onondaga

A Grammar of Onondaga

Michael Barrie
Sogang University

Onondaga is a member of the Northern branch of the Iroquoian family. It is spoken in Ontario, Canada and New York State in the United States. It is a highly endangered language with only a small handful of speakers, mostly over 60. Like other Iroquoian languages, Onondaga has a small phonemic inventory, but a rich inflectional and derivational morphology. It is a polysynthetic language with noun incorporation, subject and object agreement, and numerous morphological resources expressing both compositional and non-compositional meanings. Word order is rather free, but certain regularities are noted.

The grammar aims to be theoretically neutral and draws data as much as possible from naturalistic data as possible. As Northern Iroquoian languages are closely related, comparisons to other Northern Iroquoian languages are made periodically. This grammar is the result of 8 years of fieldwork at Six Nations in Ontario, Canada.

ISBN 9783862886005. Languages of the World/Materials 503. 102pp. 2015.