Welcome to the CCLAS project findings

All of our project findings are available for viewing by clicking on the tab Project output. Here you will find publications, graduate student research projects (mainly in the form of M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations), and presentations. Apart from community presentations, these items are targetted at a specialist audience (academic linguists) and so they are not very accessible to anyone outside of this field. The purpose of this section is to present an overview of our findings in accessible language.

This section of the website is presently under construction (last updated November 13, 2020).

Three children took part in our study between November 2004 and April 2007. Each child was video-recorded for 30-45 mintes, about once every two or three weeks, in a place they were familiar with. During the video recordings the children played with toys, read books, and chatted naturally to the other people in the room. No special efforts were made to have them talk - if they didn't feel much like talking on any given day, that was fine, though we did try to engage them in activities that would encourage talking. The video recordings form a kind of diary for each child, covering a time period of roughly two years to two and a half years. In this way we have been able to follow the children's language learning journeys.

To protect their privacy and that of their families we use different names for them in our study, but their ages are correct and that is an important part of our studies - what kind of Cree grammar and words were the children using at any given age. The children are known as:

  • Ani (video-recorded age 1 year 9 months to 4 years 3 months)
  • Daisy (video-recorded age 3 years 8 months to 5 years 11 months)
  • Billy (video-recorded age 4 year 4 months to 5 years 10 months)

Here are the areas we have examined so far in Cree child speech:

  • Preverbs (Ani)
  • Passive verbs (Billy)
  • Nouns and the affixes that attach to them (Ani, Daisy, Billy)
  • Use of English words in Cree (Billy)
  • Early verbs and the affixes that attach to them (Ani)
  • The sounds of the Cree language 
  • Where to place the stress on Cree words (Ani)

We'll have a summary of each of these areas posted, starting with preverbs. Please check back if what you are looking for is not here.