present. When constructed, an Ojibwe word (in the example below, a verb) may have some or all of the pieces in the following form: Example, using nibaa, "to sleep" Nouns Nouns distinguish plurality, animacy, obviation, and case with suffixes. Animacy is only overtly marked on plural nouns. There are no core cases to distinguish categories such as "subject" or "object", but rather various oblique cases, including a locative (e.g., wiisiniwigamig, "restaurant", wiisiniwigamigong, "in the restaurant") and a vocative plural (e.g., Ojibwedog, "(you) Ojibwes!"). Other suffixes are: pejorative (e.g., jiimaan, "canoe", jiimaanish, "worthless canoe"), diminutive (e.g., zhooniyaa, "money", zhooniyaans, "coin"), contemptive (e.g., odaabaan, "car", odaabaanenh, "just some old car"), preterit (which marks a deceased or no-longer existent person or object, e.g. nookomis, "my grandmother", nookomisiban, "my late grandmother"), and preterit-dubitative (which marks a deceased or no-longer existent person or object which was never known by the speaker, e.g. a'aw mindimooyenh, "that old woman", a'aw mindimooyenyigoban, "that late old woman I never knew"). Some nouns are considered "dependent" and cannot be presented by themselves. Instead, these dependent nouns are presented with pronoun prefixes/suffixes attached to them. An example of a dependent noun is nookomis ("my grandmother") where the dependent root -ookomis- ("grandmother") must be presented with a pronoun affix, which in this case is n-. Verb to noun transforms Other nouns are derived from verbs by transforming them to their participle form. Of the choices, third person (and thus third person plural) is the most common form. Though each class of verbs may have their own participle-forming patterns, for simplicity, only the VAI neutral mode, positive participles are shown in the example, again, using nibaa ("sleep"). Note: C, V, and VV are used in some of the tables below to indicate a generic consonant, a generic short vowel, and a generic long vowel, respectively. * For participles, the word experiences initial vowel change. 1 -nh in Odaawaa. Verbs additionally can be transformed into nouns representing concepts by adding -win, or into nouns representing an object by adding -gan or -n, or if a VAI into a gerund by dropping the final vowel or if VAI2 by adding -o. Plurals and obviative Plurals and obviative suffixes are the easiest to add to Ojibwe words. By examining the plural, one can generally determine the underlying root of the word. Generally, animate plurals end with -g, while inanimate plurals and obviatives end with -n. Often,