Abstract
This paper looks at the different ways French (and English) loan verbs are being integrated in Michif, a mixed language (the noun system is French, the verbal one is Cree) based upon two dictionaries of the language. The detailed study of the available data has shown that loan verbs are almost exclusively assigned to the vai class, i.e. a class of verbs whose single core argument is animate. This seems natural enough given that the overwhelming majority of them do have an animate core participant in the donor language as well. Still, quite a few of them can be transitive. This is accounted for by claiming that vai is the most ‘neutral’ inflectional class of Cree as far as morphology and argument structure are concerned as verbs in this class can be syntactically both intransitive and transitive.
Finally, all of the loan verbs examined have Cree equivalents and so the claim that they were borrowed because of the lack of a corresponding Cree verb in the language is difficult to accept at face value.
1 Introduction
This paper deals with French and English loan verbs in Michif, and in particular the ways in which they have been integrated into the almost exclusively Cree (i.e. Algonquian) verbal system of that language. It is especially concerned with the ways in which the argument structure of the original verb has been mapped onto the existing valency patterns.
Michif (-Cree) is a mixed language, famously unique in that its lexicon and grammar are (almost) neatly made up of two main components with separate sound systems, morphology and syntax: the nominal one (including most np modifiers) is (Canadian) French, while the verbal one is (Plains) Cree (Bakker, 1997: 4). No (significant) simplification in nominal and verbal morphology is to be observed (Bakker, 1997: 9–11), and indeed it has even been said that Michif combines the most difficult parts of French and Cree grammar, respectively, even if this impressionistic claim is difficult to evaluate empirically (Bakker, 1997: 24).
The study is based upon a careful examination of the material presented in (Laverdure and Allard, 1983), supplemented at times by (Fleury, 2013) (on which see Section 3). 1
The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 offers some terminological preliminaries for non-Algonquianists, Section 3 represents the bulk of the article and examines both loan verbs from French (Section 3.1) and loan verbs from English (Section 3.2), as well as some unclear classes (Section 3.3). In both cases loan verbs are classified according to their transitivity in the donor language (i.e. intransitive, transitive and ambitransitive). Finally, Section 4 summarizes and discusses the findings and offers a hypothesis as to the reason why almost all loan verbs have been assigned to the vai (intransitive verbs with an animate actor) class.
2 Some Terminological Preliminaries
Algonquian languages present multiple challenges to the unprepared. I will try to explain some of these, especially those pertaining to the verbal domain, in a somewhat simplified way in this short introduction (an expanded version of the discussion on Algonquian can be found in Jacques and Antonov (2014)).
2.1 Verb Classes and Animacy
Algonquian verbs are traditionally classified into four large classes, according to the transitivity of the verb and the animacy of its S or P argument, respectively. In the case of a transitive verb, the A is always animate. There is thus a major distinction between animate (na) and inanimate (ni) nouns. It is important to note that the criteria used to ascribe animate or inanimate gender to a given referent do not always coincide with those familiar from European languages: ‘sock(s)’ and ‘rock(s)’, for instance, are animate.
We have vii (intransitive verbs with an inanimate actor), vai (intransitive verbs with an animate actor), vti (transitive verbs with an inanimate patient) and vta (transitive verbs with an animate patient). The last two classes also have an animate actor. In fact, there are also several subclasses of ‘deponent’ vai and vti verbs whose syntactic behavior does not match their morphological makeup (cf. Table 1). These are usually either not specifically signalled or else termed vai-t and vti-i. Here I will call them vai
tr
and vti
intr
, respectively.
2.2 Direct/Inverse and Obviation
It is important to observe that in spite of the existence of syntactically transitive deponent verbs, the only verbs that index both of their participants as long as they are not third person are the vta (transitive animate) ones. The resulting complex forms reference their participants using S, A, P-neutral affixes. This, in turn, calls for the use of a special ‘direction’ marker (traditionally called a ‘theme sign’) in order to indicate the ‘direct’ vs. ‘inverse’ direction of the action. The use of one or the other reflects the relative position of the agent and the patient on the following hierarchy (valid for Plains Cree):
If the agent is located higher than the patient the verb shows direct marking, but if it is lower than the verb receives inverse marking. 2 Thus, we observe a tripartite distinction between proximate animate, obviative animate and inanimate referents.
Obviation is a ubiquitous feature in Algonquian, which is reflected both in verbal and nominal morphology. Its main function is to distinguish two or more third-person participants within a given sentence or stretch of discourse. Thus, in oral narratives, the obviative (obv, -(w)a in Cree) is used to introduce a hitherto unknown participant by contrast with the unmarked form which is called the proximate (prox). There can be at most one proximate participant within a given clause. Later on, the interplay between the two helps the listener to keep track of who does what to whom. Except if s/he is a persistent topic, no participant is inherently tied to a proximate or obviative status solely by virtue of their inherent semantic features. The obviative must also be used on the possessee, and on the verb whose argument the possessee is, whenever the possessor is third-person (cf. ex. 2).
2.3 Independent vs. Conjunct Order
The inflectional paradigms of the Algonquian verb classes have further been organized in five sets (called ‘orders’) in Proto-Algonquian, of which most modern languages preserve only three, i.e. the Independent, the Conjunct and the Imperative, having discarded the other two, i.e. the Interrogative and the Prohibitive. While the imperative order is self-explanatory (and won’t be dealt with in this paper), the independent (which will be discussed only in passim) and the conjunct roughly correspond to verb forms used in main and subordinate clauses, respectively. Examples 3 and 4 illustrate these with the vta verb
wâpam- ‘see’ (for an exhaustive presentation of the forms in Plains Cree for these two orders for all verb classes, cf. Tables 5 and 6. No differences between Plains Cree and Michif (non-loan) verbs have been found in the data available).
3
It is important to stress that wh-clauses, those with focalized constituents or under the scope of (clausal) negation require the use of the conjunct order, so in a sense these are ‘de-subordinated’ clauses. We can now give the full paradigms for the four main classes (excluding the deponent ones). Table 5 presents the independent order while Table 6 shows the conjunct order.
3 Loan Verbs in Michif
As in Algonquian languages in general, loan verbs are not well attested in the Michif material available to me. There are less than thirty loan verbs clearly attested in the corpus comprised of (Laverdure and Allard, 1983) (an English-Michif dictionary with more than 7,000 entries) and (Fleury, 2013) (an online English-Michif dictionary with about 11,500 translations; this was used only occasionally as in the vast majority of cases, contrary to (Laverdure and Allard, 1983) there are no real examples which would make it possible to determine the transitivity of the loan verb in Michif). Whether the source is French or English, an almost constant feature of these verbs is the presence of an initial li and a final ee (henceforth the ‘li…ee (outer) shell’), historically thought to represent the combination of the French definite article in its masculine singular form le followed by the infinitive of the relevant verb. This in turn has uniformly the form ee ([i:] < [e]) which is actually the infinitive (and the past participle) ending for the biggest inflectional verb class in French (Bakker, 1997: 242). I have excluded all cases of loan verbs attested only with French but no Cree inflectional material, 4 since this fact alone suggests that we might be dealing with cases of code-switching, or more likely, imperfect loan verb reanalysis. Likewise, I have not included denominal verbs derived by way of Cree suffixes (-iwi- ‘be’, -ihkê- ‘make’) added on to a (usually French) Michif noun. The fact that English loan verbs are also subject to insertion in the li … ee outer shell could be explained by assuming that at the time Michif came into being there were no English loan verbs. Nowadays, Michif speakers are overwhelmingly bilingual in English (but not in French) and so they have started treating loan verbs from English in the same way as they earlier did loan verbs from French. This means that the li … ee outer shell can be thought of as ‘flagging’ foreign material not subject to the usual analysis in Cree initials, medials and finals (cf. (Bakker 1997, 10:243)).
As far as valency is concerned, the loan verbs belong to both the transitive and intransitive class in French and English, with some ambitransitive ones, but no ditransitive verbs. Now, verbs in Michif show the same fourfold distinction as Cree verbs between inanimate intransitive (vii), animate intransitive (vai), transitive inanimate (vti) and transitive animate (vta).
3.1 Loan Verbs from French
All verbs in the corpus but three conform to the above-mentioned rule of insertion inside a li … ee outer shell. These are ashchinee ‘haggle’ and lahchin ‘id.’, which lack the initial and the final, respectively, on the one hand, and biniiwahwâw, the Creecized variant of libinii- ‘bless’, which lacks both and is not attested in our corpus.
Intransitive Verbs
There are four intransitive loan verbs in the corpus: libegee (< bégayer) ‘stutter’ (ex. 5 and 6), lidizhaanii (< déjeuner) ‘eat breakfast’ (ex. 8), ligazhee (< gager) ‘bet’ (ex. 9) and litimwaenee (< témoigner) ‘testify’ (ex. 10). Not surprisingly, all of them have been assigned to the vai class.
The first two examples (ex. 5 and ex. 6) show the verb libegee (< bégayer) ‘stutter’ used in the vai independent order 3rd person singular (‘he stutters’) and the conjunct order unspecified actor form in a relative clause ‘they who stutter’.
The third example (7) shows the verb librodee (< broder) ‘embroider; do fancy work’ used in the vai conjunct order in the first person ‘as I am embroidering’.
The verb lidizhaanii (< déjeuner) ‘eat breakfast’ (ex. 8) is the only one in the corpus of loan verbs attested in the first person singular. Morphologically it presents no problems as to its inflectional class (it is a vai) but as far as its derivation is concerned, we may also be dealing with a denominal verb created in Michif out of the noun li dizhaanii ‘breakfast’ (cf. lideelee (<deal) ‘deal’ in the section on ambitransitive verbs).
Ex. (10) illustrates the intransitive use of ligazhee (< gager) ‘bet’ with its (necessary) indirect object li braen ‘the brown one (horse)’ introduced by the preposition seu ‘on’.
The existence of an English loan verb libeti is suggested by the corresponding entry in (Fleury 2013) who gives what looks like the past tense form, kii-libeti-w (pst-bet-3:vai:ind) ‘he bet’ but without any examples.
Ex. (11) shows the use of litimwaenee (< témoigner) ‘testify’. This entry is problematic since the inflectional ending indicates that the subject is 1sgor 2sgbut the translation talks about a 3sg.
Transitive Verbs
There are four transitive loan verbs in the corpus: libinee (< bénir) ‘bless’ (ex. 11), lidoontee (< dompter) ‘break; train; domesticate’ (ex. 12, 13 and 14), limaenlee (< mêler) ‘mix’ (ex. 15) and livarzeew (< vernisser?) ‘whitewash’ (ex. 16). Three of them are vai (libinee ‘bless’, limaenlee ‘mix’) and livarzeew ‘whitewash’, and one is vta (lidoontee ‘break; train; domesticate’).
The first one of these, libinee (< bénir) ‘bless’ (ex. 12) appears in a transitive clause with limood ‘the people’ as its direct object.
Since the patient is human, and so intrinsically animate, the most natural way of reflecting this in the verb would be to map it onto an existing vta morphological model which would entail the use of a direction marker, in this case the direct one -â-. Yet, loan verbs are expected not to accept direction marking (Bakker, 1997: 243) and this one conforms to this expectation. We are thus dealing with the transitive use of a vai verb.
Interestingly, (Fleury, 2013) says libiniiw means ‘to bless something’ whereas for ‘to bless someone’ he gives another verb: biniiwahwâw. Now this verb is clearly borrowed from French (bénir) but does not show the initial li- and has further been adapted to fit a regular vta conjugation model (using the vta stem final /-hw-/). It thus shows the direct marker -â-. Unfortunately, once again there are no examples given. It would be especially interesting to see how the sentence ‘The priest blessed me’ would be translated using this verb. The expected verb form would be *biniiwahok < *biniiwahw-ik-w with the inverse /-ikw-/.
The verb lidoontee (< dompter) ‘break; train; domesticate’ (ex. 13, 14 and 15) is another interesting case of loan verb adaptation. Since once again the patient is animate this verb should naturally be taken over as a vta. This is exactly what has been done, this time using the causative suffix /-h/. In ex. 13 we see direct marking (-aw-), in ex. 14 the use of the va unspecified actor form and in ex. 15 the use of the vta imperative.
The verb limaenlee (< mêler) ‘mix’ (ex. 15) is an example of a vai used transitively.
Finally, livarzeew (< vernir?) ‘whitewash’ (ex. 17) is another instance of a vai used transitively.
Ambitransitive Verbs
From the point of view of their transitivity in the donor language, i.e. French, there are only two ambitransitive verbs in the corpus, the Michif loanword equivalents to (s’)astiner (< (s’)obstiner) ‘argue; haggle’ (ex. 17–21) and peinturer ‘paint’ (ex. 22–23).
The verb (s’)astiner is the Quebec evolution of Standard French (s’)obstiner ‘to persist in (doing) sth’. In Quebec French it can be used both as a transitive (astiner quelqu’un ‘to contradict s.o’) and as an intransitive (s’astiner avec quelqu’un ‘to argue with s.o.’) verb. Only the latter is attested in the corpus. What is interesting is that this verb is mostly attested in a form without the initial li- which signals a loan verb. Instead it takes directly the first person prefix nit- > d- which is the form this affix takes before a vowel-initial verb in Cree.
There is also a variant laschin, which clearly comes from the expected fusion of the definite article/accusative clitic/loan verb flag li and aschin but interestingly without the infinitive/past participle ending ee.
A variant thereof, lahchin occurs as well, but in the only example found so far it lacks any inflectional suffixes altogether (cf. ex. 20).
Finally, ex. 21 (a variant of ex. 20) uses the corresponding Cree verb kîhkâhto- ‘argue with one another’.
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Concerning the other ambitransitive verb lipaencheuree (< peinturer) ‘paint’, both the transitive (ex. 22) and intransitive (ex. 23) use are attested in the corpus.
3.2 Loan Verbs from English
As stated previously, English loan verbs also follow the above-mentioned rule of insertion inside a li … ee outer shell. All verbs but one in the corpus are attested in this form. The one exception is kalektee which lacks the initial li.
As with French loan verbs, the following sections present the English loan verbs according to their transitivity in English.
Intransitive Verbs
There is only one intransitive English loan verb in the corpus: ligamblee < gamble (ex. 24) and it is unambiguously attested as a vai verb in Michif.
Transitive Verbs
There are seven transitive loan verbs from English: librushii ‘brush’, likaenee ‘can’ (ex. 25 and 26), licharjee ‘charge’ (ex. 27), lihaulee ‘haul’ (ex. 28), lirobee ‘rob’ (ex. 30), lisetlee ‘settle’ (ex. 31) and litrustii ‘trust’.
librushii ‘brush’ and litrustii ‘trust’, are attested only in (Fleury 2013) with no examples in the case of the latter, and only the expressions ‘brush one’s teeth’ librushii lii daan vs. ‘brush the floor’ librushii li plaanshii in the case of the former. This shows that librushii ‘brush’ is used transitively in Michif as well, and so it must be a vai, as it does not have vti morphology. As for litrustii ‘trust’, it appears in the forms li trustiihk and li trustiiw which show that it must also be a vai, although no collocations are given in this case. Of course with ‘trust’ the object tends to be human (and therefore animate), and so we would expect a vta here, but this does not seem to be the case.
likaenee ‘can’ (ex. 26 and 27) is attested in two examples: one in the vai unspecified actor form which translates the English gerund canning without an overt object and another one in the 1sg.
Ex. 27 illustrates the use of licharjee ‘charge’ in a relative clause headed by kaw- (‘that which charges’) to translate battery charger with en batree ‘a battery’ as its object. It is thus transitively used in Michif as well in spite of its vai morphology.
Ex. 28 shows the verb lihaulee ‘haul’ to be a vai verb used transitively in Michif as well. It is another instance of the use of the unspecified actor form to render the English gerund.
This example has also another version (ex. 29) with the antipassive of the Cree verb âwacikêw (vai) ‘haul things’, itself an antipassive from âwatâw (vai
tr
) ‘haul something’, appearing in the conjunct order of the vai unspecified actor form.
In ex. 30 the verb lirobee ‘rob’ is used transitively with la bawnk ‘the bank’ as its object. It stands in the vai unspecified actor form used in the conjunct order as it is a complement clause to the verb kishkayist- (vti) ‘know something’.
Finally, ex. 31 shows the verb lisetlee ‘settle (a dispute, etc.)’ used transitively with aen nushchinawsyoon ‘a dispute’ as its object.
Ambitransitive Verbs
There are six ambitransitive English loan verbs in the corpus: libegee (< beg) ‘beg’ (ex. 32), liboksee (< box) ‘box’ (ex. 34), liselebratee (< celebrate) ‘celebrate’ (ex. 35, 36, 37 and 38), kalektee (< collect) ‘collect’(ex. 39), lideelee (< deal) ‘deal’ (ex. 40) and lipaaktii (< pack) ‘pack’ (only as translational equivalent in (Fleury, 2013)). While all of these can be used transitively and take a direct object in English, their intransitive use is the only one attested in the corpus.
The first of these, libegee < beg (ex. 32), appears in the vai unspecified actor form (ay-libegee-hk), which often serves as a translation of the English infinitive in the corpus. There is not enough context, but we can assume that here the infinitive is used in the same way as the -ing form, i.e. the verbal noun ‘begging, panhandling’, would be.
This example actually has a second variant with the antipassive (-(i)kê) of a Cree verb this time, nitotamâw (vai) ‘request/ask for something’, used in the unspecified actor form (-hk): aen-doutamaw-kay-hk < ê-nitotamâkê-hk (ex. 33).
The next verb, liboksee ‘box’ (ex. 34), is attested in only one example in which it appears in an expression translating the English to shadowbox. This could be analyzed synchronically as the verb to box used as a transitive verb with shadow as its incorporated object, i.e. to box one’s shadow > to shadowbox.
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The result of course is an intransitive verb. Now, in Michif no such incorporation takes place and what we have is literally ‘he boxes his shadow’. The verb is therefore used transitively. It is still a vai verb, since shadow is not animate and so we have another case of a transitive vai.
There are four examples of liselebratee ‘celebrate’ in the corpus, in all of which it is used intransitively. In ex. 36 it appears in the independent order of the unspecified actor form for vai verbs -nawniwun (=-nâniwan), but without the initial li-.
Ex. 36 and 37 illustrate its use in the future and the past tense, respectively.
While the verb in ex. 36 is used unambiguously as intransitive, ex. 37 can be analyzed as either intransitive (i.e. ‘We celebrated on the fourth of July’) or as transitive (‘We celebrated the fourth of July’). The former seems more probable given the other examples and the fact that time adjuncts are rarely verb arguments, even if we have another potentially ambiguous example 38.
Ex. 35 and the translation of celebration as kaw-selebraytee-hk (nmlz-celebrate-unspec:vai:cnj) leave no doubt that this verb belongs with the vai class.
Ex. 39 illustrates the only use of kalektee ‘collect (money, taxes)’, a verb which lacks initial li- and is used intransitively.
The last English ambitransitive loan verb is lideelee ‘deal’ (ex. 40). This may actually not be a direct borrowing from English given its meaning in Michif, i.e. ‘make a deal’. It is not excluded that we are dealing with a denominal (a deal > li deel) verb created in Michif itself, although this noun is not attested in the corpus which has the French lee marshee instead. lideelee ‘deal’ is used intransitively and is thus another instance of a vai verb.
3.3 Loan Verbs from French or English
There are two verbs in the corpus which may have been borrowed either from French or from English: lifyeuzee < refuse(r) (ex. 41) and livotee < vote(r) (ex. 42 and 43).
Ambitransitive Verbs
There is one ambitransitive verb in the corpus: lifyeuzee < refuse(r) (ex. 41) used intransitively. It is interesting to observe that it must have been subjected to haplological apocope (li-lifyeuz-ee > lifyeuzee). Furthermore, it is one of two examples (cf. 20) in the corpus of a loan verb which lacks any inflectional suffix at all. This formally prevents us from ascertaining its inflectional class, although it most probably belongs to the vai class.
Intransitive Verbs
There is one intransitive verb livotee < vote(r) (ex. 42 and 43).
4 Discussion
This paper has attempted a preliminary study of loan verbs in the mixed language Michif (French/Cree), whose verbal system is almost exclusively Cree (i.e. Algonquian), based on two dictionaries of this language: (Laverdure and Allard, 1983) and (Fleury, 2013).
While the way loan verbs are integrated from the morpho(phono)logical point of view is in itself a topic of interest, it is their syntactic integration which has been at the center of my work. This is due to the existence of (broadly) two main inflectional classes in French or English (the donor languages for the loan verbs attested in the corpus) versus at least four in Cree (as in Algonquian languages in general): vii, vai, vti and vta (cf. Section 2.1 and Table 1). Verbs are assigned to one of these classes according to the animacy of their single core argument (S), in case of an intransitive verb, or their patient (P), in the case of a transitive one. There is thus one supplementary piece of information to be taken into account when deciding to which verb class to assign a given loan verb.
The detailed study of the available data has shown that loan verbs, both from French and from English, are almost exclusively assigned to the vai class, i.e. a class of verbs whose single core argument is animate. This seems natural enough given that the overwhelming majority of them do have an animate core participant in the donor language as well. What may seem more problematic is the fact that this core participant is not always or uniquely the single core participant (S), i.e. most verbs (especially those from English) are ambitransitive, and some are clearly only transitive. The question then is why vai has been considered a better choice than for instance vti or even vta?
The short answer to that question is that vai appears to be the most ‘neutral’ inflectional class of Cree as far as morphology and argument structure are concerned. Indeed, on the level of morphology, with the exception of vii, 7 all other verb classes have endings derived from those of the vai class, in addition to some extra material characteristic of vti and vta. In the case of vti we have a typical final (/-ht-/) and a thematic vowel (/-ê-/) in the case of sap , or a suffix (/-am-/) in the case of non-sap agents, respectively, which index a third person inanimate object. In the case of vta the verb has affixes indexing both participants and additionally indicates direction of action by way of a direction marker (direct /-â-/ vs. inverse /-ikw-/). On the level of argument structure, vai are flexible as they can be both intransitive and transitive. What is more, when transitive, their P can be either animate or inanimate. This is not the case of vti or vta. vti verbs can be intransitive as well but only for a very short list of verbs which were earlier transitive but whose object has now become generic, and their P argument when transitive can only be inanimate. vta verbs, on the other hand, can only have an animate agent and an animate patient, 8 and cannot be used intransitively.
In conclusion, vai is the only class which does not impose any profound morphological changes to any given loan verb, and it can be used both intransitively and transitively, and when used transitively can have both an animate and an inanimate P.
Nevertheless, there are two verbs in the corpus which have been adapted in different ways in order to be eligible for membership in the vta class: biniiwahwâw ‘bless someone’ (ex. 12) and lidoontee ‘domesticate’ (ex. 15). Both show relevant vta affixes such as crucially the direct marker /-â-/. 9 This shows that there is nothing inherent in loan verbs which would preclude them from becoming vta verbs and receiving direction marking as well (pace Bakker 1997: 243).
Finally, all of the loan verbs I have examined have Cree equivalents and so the claim that they were borrowed because of the lack of a corresponding Cree verb in the language (Bakker, 1997: 242) seems difficult to accept at face value, although it can indeed be argued that the corresponding Cree verbs, when they exist, “either have a much more general meaning, hence they are not as precise as the French/English verbs, or they describe different activities” (Bakker, pc).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank all of the anonymous reviewers, the editors and especially Peter Bakker for invaluable comments which greatly improved the previous versions of this paper. I am solely responsible for any remaining errors. I follow the Leipzig glossing rules, to which the following are added: cnj conjunct, ind independent, init initial change, inv inverse, na animate noun, ni inanimate noun, pa Proto-Alqonguian, vii inanimate intransitive verb, vai animate intransitive verb, vta transitive animate verb, vti transitive inanimate verb.
References
Bakker Peter . 1997. A Language of Our Own: The Genesis of Michif, the Mixed Cree-French Language of the Canadian Métis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Bakker Peter and Fleury Norman . 2007. La Pchit Sandrieuz an Michif – Cinderella in Michif. Winnipeg: MMF Michif Language Program and authors.
Fleury Norman . 2013. Michif Dictionary. The Virtual Museum of Métis History and Culture. Gabriel Dumont Institute. Available online at http://www.metismuseum.ca/michif_dictionary.php (last accessed 26/08/2016).
Laverdure Patline and Allard Ida Rose . 1983. The Michif Dictionary: Turtle Mountain Chippewa Cree. Edited by Crawford John C. . Winnipeg: Pemmican Publicatons.
The spelling between these two differs and both are different from standard Plain Cree spelling: (Laverdure and Allard, 1983) uses a reasonably consistent English based spelling, whereas (Fleury, 2013) combines English-based spellings and more phonetic spellings. Thus, the endings -ee and -ii, for instance, are phonemically identical. I have decided to reproduce the spellings as they appear in my sources.
It is generally considered that the second person outranks the first person (2 > 1) in Algonquian languages, but this refers to a distinct hierarchy related to the slot accessibility of person prefixes, not the distribution of direct and inverse forms.
Differences in form between the forms in these tables and the ones in the Michif examples are by and large due to different spelling conventions and initial vowel elision of suffixes when the preceding verb stem ends in a vowel.
In the case of French this includes bare imperatives as well as cases of the third person pronoun (i(l) [no final l before a consonant initial verb form] ‘s/he’) used with auxiliaries (i va ‘3:fut’, il i ‘s/he is’, il a ‘s/he has’ + loan verb ‘infinitive’ in -ee).
Reciprocal verbs, which contain the reciprocal suffix -ito-, are always morphologically intransitive.
From a diachronic point of view, we are most certainly dealing with a case of back-formation from the gerund form shadowboxing, as with all cases of incorporating verbs in English. This does not make them any less incorporating synchronically.
Note that there is no verb assigned to this class among those attested, i.e. all of the loan verbs I have found have an animate S or A.
It is only in the case of ditransitive verbs which are all vta that we can have a T(heme) argument which is either animate or inanimate and which is not indexed on the verb.
It remains to be confirmed that the inverse marker /-ikw-/ can also be used on these.