The stop, fricative, and affricate consonants are divided into two sets, conventionally referred to as Fortis and Lenis, or equivalently 'Strong' and 'Weak.
The fortis consonants (p, t, k, ch, s, sh) are invariably voiceless and phonetically long.
[3] The stops are also aspirated in most positions: [pːʰ], [tːʰ], [kːʰ], [tʃːʰ], but unaspirated after another consonant.
The lenis consonants (b, d, g, j, z, zh) are typically voiced intervocalically and word-initially before a vowel but are devoiced in word-final position.
[12] Nichols (1980), in his study of the related Southwestern Ojibwa dialect spoken in Minnesota describes the status of the analogous vowels as unclear, noting that while the distribution of the long nasal vowels is restricted, there is a minimal pair giiwe ('s/he goes home' and giiwenh ('so the stories goes').
[15] Ottawa (and Eastern Ojibwa) are characterized by a pervasive pattern of vowel syncope, whereby short vowels are completely deleted or in certain circumstances reduced to schwa [ə], when they appear in metrically defined Weak syllables, discussed below.
Syncope sharply distinguishes Ottawa and Eastern Ojibwa from other dialects of Ojibwe, although related patterns of syncope primarily affecting word-initial syllables have also been recorded for Ojibwe communities along the north shore of Lake Superior, between Thunder Bay and Sault Ste.
[17] Although reduction and syncope effects in Walpole Island Ottawa were noted in Bloomfield (1958), and treated by him as vowel reduction, the situation was not identical in all Ottawa materials collected in approximately the same period.
Material collected by Bloomfield in 1941 from Ottawa speaker Angeline Williams, then residing at Sugar Island, Michigan, east of Sault Ste.
[19] Syncope is also sociolinguistically complex in terms of the way it is realized by different speakers of Ottawa, as distinct patterns have been noted that involve age grading and regional variation within Ottawa-speaking territory.
[20] The Potawatomi language also has rules that affect short vowels, reducing them to schwa [ə] and also deleting them under conditions similar to Ottawa.
The Potawatomi phenomena were recorded as early as the 1830s, whereas Ottawa materials from the same period do not show any signs of vowel reduction or deletion.
[21] The rise of extensive Syncope in Ottawa may be a substratum effect related to the migration of Potawatomi speakers to Ottawa-speaking communities in southern Ontario in the late nineteenth century.
[22] Distinct unrelated patterns of syncope in more restricted contexts are also found in northern dialects, in particular Severn Ojibwa and Algonquin.
Taken together, the metrical Foot in combination with weak and strong syllables define the domain for relative prominence, in which a Strong syllable is more prominent than the weak member of the foot.
[25] Syllable weight plays a significant role in Ottawa phonology and determines stress placement and syncope.
Addition of inflectional prefixes or suffixes can change the syllable weight assignment of a word.
Similarly, the same noun can also occur with the inanimate plural suffix /-an/, as in General Ojibwe makizinan ('shoes').
The Ojibwe word 'my shoes' (non-syncopating dialects) has both the personal prefix and the plural suffix: nimakizinan.
The basic form of a noun or verb word without any inflectional prefixes or suffixes is referred to as the stem.
Here, the quality of the vowel can only be determined by examining the form of the word in other dialects of Ojbwe that have not been affected by Syncope, or by referring to earlier sources for Ottawa, such as Baraga's late nineteenth-century dictionary.
Other examples include bp → p; dt → t; gk → k.[31] Secondarily-arising word-initial consonant clusters reflect a pattern of Reduplication of verb roots that forms many Ottawa words.
Alveolar consonants t, d, and sometimes n (only those from Proto-Algonquian *θ were subject) and s, were palatalized to ch, j, zh, and sh respectively before original i or ii.
[43] Weak short /i/ is also realized as /a/ in certain words in the initial syllable of noun or verb stems.