Ottawa is characterized by a system of grammatical gender that classifies nouns as either animate or inanimate.^[1] Transitive verbs select for the gender of the grammatical object, and intransitive verbs select for the gender of the grammatical subject, creating a set of four verb subclasses.^[2]

1. Animate Intransitive (VAI) (animate subject)
2. Inanimate Intransitive (VII) (inanimate subject)
3. Transitive Animate (VTA) (animate subject, animate object)
4. Transitive Inanimate (VTI) (animate subject, inanimate object)

Noun gender is cross-referenced in agreement with verbs, and there is agreement in gender with demonstrative pronouns as well.^[3]

Verbs are inflected in three separate paradigmatic classes called Orders. The Orders are: Independent, Conjunct, and Imperative'.^[4] The second person singular forms for the verb jiibaakwe "cook" are given below in each Order; the inflectional prefix or suffix is in bold type.

1. Independent

gjiibaakwe "you (singular)"

2. Conjunct

jiibaakweyin "you (singular)"

3. Imperative

jiibwaakwen "you (singular)"

Any verb may be inflected in any one of the orders. Each of the four major verb subclasses has a distinct paradigm for each Order.

Each of the three verb Orders is further divided into sub-paradigms called Modes.^[5]

1. Indicative (Neutral)
2. Preterite
3. Dubitative
4. Preterite-Dubitative

• Baraga, Frederic. 1878. A dictionary of the Otchipwe language, explained in English. A new edition, by a missionary of the Oblates. Part I, English-Otchipwe; Part II, Otchipwe-English. Montréal: Beauchemin & Valois. Reprint (in one volume), Minneappolis: Ross and Haines, 1966, 1973.
• Bloomfield, Leonard. 1958. Eastern Ojibwa: Grammatical sketch, texts and word list. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
• [Dawes, Charles E.] 1982. Dictionary English-Ottawa Ottawa-English. No publisher given.
• Feest, Johanna, and Christian Feest. 1978. Ottawa. Bruce Trigger, ed., The Handbook of North American Indians, Volume 15. Northeast, pp. 772-786. Washington, D.C.: The Smithsonian Institution.
• Nichols, John. 1980. Ojibwe morphology. PhD dissertation, Harvard University.
• Nichols, John and Earl Nyholm. 1995. A concise dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe. St. Paul: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 0-8166-2427-5
• Rhodes, Richard. 1976. “A preliminary report on the dialects of Eastern Ojibwa-Odawa.” W. Cowan, ed., Papers of the seventh Algonquian conference, pp. 129-156. Ottawa: Carleton University.
• Rhodes, Richard A. 1985. Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-013749-6
• Todd, Evelyn. 1970. A grammar of the Ojibwa language: The Severn dialect. PhD dissertation, University of North Carolina, Charlotte.
• Wilson, Edward. 1874. The Ojebway language: A manual for missionaries and others employed among the Ojebway Indians. Toronto: Rowsell & Hutchison for the S.P.C.K.

Category: Linguistic morphology Category:Anishinaabe languages