Death's Door, Wisconsin

I am a Potawatomi linguist. I recieved my PhD in 2020 from the Department of Linguistics at The University of Chicago. My primary areas of interest are the Potawatomi language, language revitalization, discourse phenomena, language pedagogy, morphology and syntactic theory, law, and computational linguistics. [My CV]

Publications and Papers

Links to papers

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. to appear. Potawatomi-English Language Planning and Isaac McCoy's Baptist Mission Schools. Papers of the 52nd Algonquian Conference.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2022. The Scattered Evidential System of Potawatomi. Papers of the 51st Algonquian Conference, ed. by Monica Macaulay and Margaret Noodin. Michigan State University Press. [Paper]

  • Thomas Loftis and Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2021. Building Potawatomi Verbs. Self published. [Book]

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2020. Review of Michael D. Sullivan Sr.. Relativization in Ojibwe. University of Nebraska Press. 2020. International Journal of American Linguistics, 581-583. [Review]

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2019. Theme signs in Potawatomi as object agreement and the inverse. Papers of the 48th Algonquian Conference, ed. by Monica Macaulay and Margaret Noodin, 123-142. Michigan State University Press. [Paper]

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2017. There’s no mii in Potawatomi: The diachronic nature of six discourse markers in the Ojibwe-Potawatomi branch. Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, ed. by Julia Nee, Margarey Cychosz, Dmetri Hayes, Tyler Lau and Emily Remirez, 483-496. Berkeley Linguistics Society. [Paper]

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2013. Complementizer Agreement in Najdi Arabic. MA Thesis, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS. [Thesis]

Unpublished manuscripts

  • The history of the disjunctive particle anaké
  • The independent-identifying method does not support a Dene-Yeniseian link.

Talks

Links to some talks

  • Corinne Kasper and Robert E. Lewis Jr. The Potawatomi Complementizer System. 54th Algonquian Conference. Boulder, Colorado, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. and Sogi LeClere. Investing in effective language initiatives. Potawatomi Gathering Tribal Leaders Meeting. Hannahville Indian Community.

  • Collins, Carla, Donald Keeble, and Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2022. Bodwéwadmimwen Ėthë ték, Inc.’s Ggékyamnanêk Wdathmownëwan Project: The Center for the Potawatomi Language's Our Elders’ Stories Project. Presentation at Indigenous Storytelling: Short stories and translations of Aesop's Fables in the Indigenous America. South Bend, Indiana, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2022. The Grasshopper (and the Ant): A Potawatomi yadsokan. Presentation at Indigenous Storytelling: Short stories and translations of Aesop's Fables in the Indigenous America. South Bend, Indiana, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2022. New Evidence on the Cree-Ojibwe Connection: Futurity and Complementizers. Presentation at The Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, Washington DC, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2021. Look! Directive Interjections across the Algonquian Language Family. 53rd Algonquian Conference. Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. [Slides]

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2021. The Immediate Future Tense in Potawatomi. Presentation at the 23rd Workshop on American Indigenous Languages. Santa Barbara, California, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2021. Towards a Grammar of Potawatomi Interjections. Presentation at the Society for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the Americas, San Francisco, California, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2020. A History of Potawatomi Language Planning and Policy: Education Funding from 1819 to 1848. Presentation at the 52nd Algonquian Conference. Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2020. The Evidential System of Potawatomi. Presentation at The University of Chicago's Workshop on Language, Variation and Change, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2020. Narrative Structure of a Potawatomi Text. Presentation at the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas, New Orleans, Louisiana, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2019. The Scattered Evidential System of Potawatomi. Presentation at the 51st Algonquian Conference, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2018. Additivity in Potawatomi. Presentation at The University of Chicago's Workshop on Language, Variation and Change, Chicago, Illinois, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2018. Potawatomi mine: conjunction, adverbial, adjective, and additive focus particle. Presentation at Workshop in General Linguistics 15, Madison, Wisconsin, USA.

  • Robert E. Lewis Jr. 2018. Learning how to advocate for community language rights: Citizen Potawatomi Nation. Presentation at Let’s Talk In Our Own Words: Native Language Revival and Preservation in the Indigenous Americas, South Bend, Indiana, USA. [Slides]

Research

These are a few research projects that I am invovled with.

Potawatomi NLP Project

This project seeks to create useful computational tools for the Potawatomi language. I am currently working on a spellchecker, POS tagger, morphological parser, and discourse parser. View the project on Github (dokmegizhek/lang-pot).

Algonquian Interjections Project

This project seeks to document and describe the interjections used in the Algonquian language family to understand contact and better prepare pedagogical materials and methods on interjections.

Teaching

The University of Winnipeg

  • Language Revitalization
  • Introduction to Linguistics
  • Language Typology

Non-research Projects

Non-research projects that I am invovled with:

Ggékyamnanêk Wdathmownëwan

This project seeks to publish stories from first language speakers of Potawatomi. This project is directed by the Wisconsin-based nonprofit Bodwéwadmimwen Ėthë ték, Inc.