vowels is restricted, there is a minimal pair distinguished only by the nasality of the vowel: 'he goes home' and 'so the story goes'. Other discussions of Ottawa phonology and phonetics are silent on the issue. Grammar Ottawa shares the general grammatical characteristics of the other dialects of Ojibwe. Word classes include nouns, verbs, grammatical particles, pronouns, preverbs, and prenouns. Ottawa grammatical gender classifies nouns as either animate or inanimate. Transitive verbs encode the gender of the grammatical object, and intransitive verbs encode the gender of the grammatical subject, creating a set of four verb subclasses. The distinction between the two genders also affects verbs through agreement patterns for number and gender. Similarly, demonstrative pronouns agree in gender with the noun they refer to. Morphology Ottawa has complex systems of both inflectional and derivational morphology. Inflectional morphology has a central role in Ottawa grammar. Noun inflection and verb inflection indicate grammatical information through prefixes and suffixes that are added to word stems. Notable grammatical characteristics marked with inflectional prefixes and suffixes include: A distinction between obviative and proximate third person, marked on both verbs and nouns. Extensive marking on verbs of inflectional information concerning person. Number (singular and plural). Tense. Modality. Evidentiality. Negation. Prefixes mark grammatical person on verbs, including first person, second person, and third person. Nouns use combinations of prefixes and suffixes to indicate possession. Suffixes on nouns mark gender, location, diminutive, pejorative, and other categories. Significant agreement patterns between nouns and verbs involve gender, singular and plural number, as well as obviation. Ottawa derivational morphology forms basic word stems with combinations of word roots (also called initials), and affixes referred to as medials and finals to create words to which inflectional prefixes and suffixes are added. Word stems are combined with other word stems to create compound words. Innovations in Ottawa morphology contribute to differentiating Ottawa from other dialects of Ojibwe. These differences include: the reanalysis of person prefixes and word stems; the loss of final /-n/ in certain inflectional suffixes; a distinctive form for the verbal suffix indicating doubt; and a distinctive form for the verbal suffix indicating plurality on intransitive verbs with grammatically inanimate subjects. The most significant of the morphological innovations that characterize Ottawa is the restructuring of the three person prefixes that occur on both nouns and verbs. The prefixes carry grammatical information about grammatical person (first, second, or third). Syncope modifies the