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manageable, only 24 terms of possession, in addition to own, were selected as psycholinguistic
stimuli. These were save, cherish, buy, hide, possess, deserve, manage, be familiar with, share,
plan, want, use, keep, like, be given, protect, have, claim, control, be used to, lend, make, desire
and need. The translations of the Cree verb phrases in syllabic script appear in Table 8.
Because Cree is an inflected language, in all psycholinguistic tasks, these verbs were
presented in the sentence form, “He ed that.”
The Cree respondents were 40 Cree adults from Attawapiskat. Half were over age 40 and
were unilingual in Cree. The other half were younger than age 50, had been schooled in English,
and were bilingual in Cree and English. In each generational language condition, half were male
and half were female. Sessions were conducted in the homes of the individual respondents,
with the assistance of an interpreter for the Cree unilinguals. Sampling was opportunistic,
relying on the interpreter’'s discretion (Honigmann, 1970).
The English-Canadian respondents were matched for age and sex with the Cree, and were
recruited on an opportunistic basis in their homes and work sites. Table 9 shows the
comparability of Cree and English respondents for age and sex. For this study, two criteria were
required for classification as “English-Canadian”: 1) the respondent had to be a speaker of
English as his or her first language, and 2) both parents of the respondent had to be
natural-born Canadian citizens.
After introductions were made and agreement was given to participate in the study, three
psycholinguistic tasks and three interview questions were presented, taking approximately 30
minutes in total. Responses were not recorded on tape because this was found to be
unacceptable to many Cree respondents. For all of the tasks, unilingual Cree respondents
received instructions and all aural and written stimuli in Cree and their responses were
recorded by the interpreter. Cree-English bilinguals received instructions and aural stimuli in
Cree, but written stimuli in Cree and English. English-Canadian respondents received
instructions and stimuli in English.
The first psycholinguistic task was constrained free-recall. Respondents were asked to
listen to a cassette recording of the 25 verb expressions and to try to remember as many words
as possible. After a wait of approximately one minute while the cassette player was put away
and the data form was readied, they were asked to recall as many words as possible, in any
order.