Richard A. Rhodes
Associate Professor, Undergraduate Advisor

American Indian languages, grammatical theory, phonology and lexicology

Groups: Language & Historical Context, Fieldwork & Language Documentation

Contact information

Email: rrhodes@berkeley.edu

Office hours: TTh 2-3, W 11-12 (F 08)

Personal statement

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Michigan, 1976. His work has been centered on topics relating to American Indian languages, particularly those of the Algonquian family, including bringing insights gained in fieldwork to bear on typology and on analytic issues in better studied languages. He has done extensive fieldwork on the Ottawa dialect of Ojibwe which is spoken in Michigan and southern Ontario, and on Métchif, a language of the northern plains consisting of French and Cree elements. More recently he has done fieldwork on Sayula Popoluca, a Mixe-Zoquean language of southern Mexico. His most important work is the Eastern Ojibwe-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary which incorporates two dialects of Ojibwe. He has written extensively on the syntax of Ojibwe, on topics of Ojibwe ethnohistory, and on the lexicography of American Indian languages.

Selected publications

 “Multiple Assertions, Grammatical Constructions, Lexical Pragmatics, and the Eastern Ojibwe-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary.”  In Making Dictionaries: Preserving Indigenous Lnaguages of the Americas. William Frawley, Kenneth C. Hill, & Pamela Munro (eds.) Berkeley: University of California Press. 108-124. (2002)

“The History of Algonquian Number Words.”  In Essays in Algonquian, Catawban and Siouan Linguistics in Memory of Frank T. Siebert, Jr.. Blair A. Rudes & David J. Costa (eds.) Memoir 16 Algonquian and Iroquoian Linguistics. Winnipeg: Algonquian and Iroquian Linguistics. 181-215. (with David Costa). (2003)

Alexander Francis Chamberlain and The Language of the Mississaga Indians of Skugog. Papers of the Thirty-fifth Algonquian Conference. H. C. Wolfart (ed.), Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. 363-372. (2004)

Directional pre-verbs in Ojibwe and the registration of path. Papers of the Thirty-sixth Algonquian Conference. H. C. Wolfart (ed.), Winnipeg: University of Manitoba. 371-382. 2005. (2005)

Mixe-Zoquean Languages. In Encyclopedia of Languages and Linguistics, 2nd Edition. Vol. 8. Keith Brown (ed.) Amsterdam: Elsevier. (2005)

Missing obliques: some anomalies in Ojibwe syntax. In Donna Gerdts, ed. Festschrift for David Perlmutter. Cambridge: MIT Press. (in press)