Secondary derivation in the Michif verb: Beyond the traditional Algonquian template: (Presented with the glossed text of “La pchit Sandrieuz”, Fleury & Bakker 2004)

Scholars use the terms primary and secondary derivation to describe
stem formation in Plains Cree and other Algonquian languages, in a way that does not highlight the substantial difference between the two processes and does not create a distinction between final morphemes (involved in primary derivation) and derivatives of the stem (involved in secondary derivation). This approach is also generally used for Michif. In this paper, I focus on the difference between primary and secondary derivation in Michif, recognizing that: (1) so-called primary derivation is combination of categorizing items (finals) to lexical initials, it is mostly unavailable to speakers as a conscious process, and non-productive, while (2) so-called secondary derivation is canonical derivation of suffixes deriving autonomous stems, it is available to speakers and productive. Based on this, I propose a Michif verb template that originates in Michif occurrences only. I also provide the list of 20 secondary derivatives in Michif, their semantic functions and their linguistic behavior, based on the analysis of the text of La pchit Sandrieuz (Fleury and Bakker 2004) included as an Appendix.