Richard A. Rhodes

Ph.D., Linguistics, University of Michigan, 1976

Rhodes's work has been centered on topics relating to American Indian languages, particularly those of the Algonquian family, bringing insights gained in fieldwork to bear on typological questions in syntax. He has done extensive fieldwork on the Ottawa dialect of Ojibwe which is spoken in Michigan and southern Ontario, and on Métchif, a language of the northern plains consisting of French and Cree elements. He has also done fieldwork on Sayula Popoluca, a Mixe-Zoquean language of southern Mexico. His most important work is the Eastern Ojibwe-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary, which incorporates two dialects of Ojibwe. He has written extensively on the descriptive syntax and syntactic typology of Ojibwe, on the historical linguistics of Métchif, and on lexical semantics and lexicography in American Indian languages. His current research focuses on the intersection of language, history, and geography.

• "The Cree of Métchif", in Papers of the Thirty-ninth Algonquian Conference, ed. by K. S. Hele & R. Darnell (London: University of Western Ontario, 2008), pp. 569-580
• "The Phonological History of Metchif", in Le français d'un continent à l'autre:Mélanges offerts à Yves Charles Morin, ed. by F. Martineau and L. Baronian (Les Voies du français, 1; Québec: Presses de l'Université Laval, 2009), pp. 423-442
• "VC reduplication in Sayula Popoluca", Grazer Linguisticsche Studien 71 (2009) 59-78
• "Missing obliques: Some anomalies in Ojibwe syntax", in Hypothesis A/Hypothesis B: Linguistic Explorations in Honor of David Perlmutter, ed. by Donna Gerdts, John Moore, and Maria Polinsky (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010), pp. 427-456
• Relative root complement: a unique grammatical relation in Algonquian syntax. In Michael Cysouw, Orin Gensler, and Jan Wohlgemuth (eds.), Rara & Rarissima: Documenting the Fringes of Linguistic Diversity (Empirical Approaches to Language Typology). Berlin: de Gruyter. pp. 305-324 (2010)
• "Ditransitive Constructions in Ojibwe", in Studies in Ditransitive Constructions: A Comparative Handbook, ed. by Andrej Malchukov, Martin Haspelmath, and Bernard Comrie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 626-650
• "Algonquian Trade Languages Revisited", in Papers of the Fortieth Algonquian Conference, ed. by K. Hele & J. R. Valentine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2012), pp. 358-369
• "The Michif Dictionary and Language Change in Métchif", in Papers of the Forty-First Algonquian Conference, ed. by K. Hele & J. R. Valentine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2013), pp. 268-278
• "Transitivity in Ojibwe", with J. Randall Valentine, in Valency Classes: A comparative handbook, ed. by Andrej Malchukov, Martin Haspelmath, Iren Hartmmann, and Bernard Comrie (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015), pp. 1206-1264
• "Instrumentality and Frames in Ojibwe", in Papers of the Forty-Third Algonquian Conference, ed. by M. Macaulay & J. R. Valentine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2015), pp. 195-206
• "On the semantics of abstract finals: 35 years later", in Papers of the Forty-Fourth Algonquian Conference, ed. by M. Macaulay & J. R. Valentine (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2016), pp. 289-310
• "Obviation, Inversion, and the Notion of Topic in Algonquian", in Papers of the Forty-Sixth Algonquian Conference, ed. by M. Macaulay & M. Noodin (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), pp. 197-211
• "Baraga'sJesus o Bimadisiwin", in Papers of the Forty-Seventh Algonquian Conference, ed. by M. Macaulay & M. Noodin (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017), pp. 273-293
• "Vectors of language spread at the central steppe periphery: Finno-Ugric as catalyst language", with Johanna Nichols, in Proceedings of the XV Nordic Theoretical Archeology Group (April, 2015) (in press)
• The Language of Hunter-Gatherers, ed. by Tom Güldemann, Pat McConvell, and Richard A. Rhodes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press)
• "Ojibwe Language Shift: 1600-present", in The Language of Hunter-Gatherers, ed. by Tom Güldemann, Pat McConvell, and Richard A. Rhodes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press)
• "The Goals of Language Documentation", with Lyle Campbell, in The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, in press)
• "Peter Jones'Genesis", in Papers of the Forty-Eighth Algonquian Conference, ed. by M. Macaulay & M. Noodin (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, in press)