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<DIV>Dear Dave, Sally, and all:<BR><BR>Over the years as I dealt with Mobilian
Jargon and other Native American<BR>contact media, I have indeed come to
question the status of American Indian<BR>Pidgin English (AIPE) as a true
pidgin. I have presented it instead as a<BR>broken English or "an amalgam of
partial native-language replacements<BR>(including English relexifications of
Native American speech), stereotypical<BR>presentations, and superimposed
hypercorrections by Europeans, who took<BR>considerable freedom in documenting
Native American speech and perhaps even<BR>drew on widely attested forms of
non-Indian Pidgin English as models." Some<BR>telling evidence for the use of
AIPE as a literary medium comes from a quote<BR>on Catawba, a native language of
southeastern North America, or a medium<BR>based on it: "We have endeavored to
put into the Indian-English, as more<BR>suitable to the subject, and more
accessible to the reader, that dialogue<BR>which was spoken in the most musical
Catawba." (W. Gilmore Simms, _The<BR>Wigwam and the Cabin_ (New York: W.J.
Widdleton, 1856 [revised edition], p.<BR>391). I surmise that the authors of
documents with AIPE have taken such<BR>poetic license again and again. For
further details, see pp. 1222-5 of my<BR>article that David cites below and that
appeared in the _Atlas of Languages<BR>of Intercultural Communication in the
Pacific, Asia, and the Americas_,<BR>edited by Stephen A. Wurm, Peter
Mühlhäusler, and Darrell T. Tryon (Berlin:<BR>Mouton de Gruyter, 1996). Much of
the same discussion also appears on pp.<BR>23-28 of my book _Mobilian Jargon:
Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of<BR>a Native American Pidgin_ (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997).<BR> Such a conclusion is not
surprising when one considers the great variety<BR>of Native American languages
and contact media based on them that existed in<BR>North America through the
19th century and into the 20th. It is worth<BR>recalling that English as either
a contact medium or national language did<BR>not come dominate in North America
until the second half of the 19th<BR>century, if not even later. In this light,
it appears increasingly unlikely<BR>that until the 20th century, there existed a
single, fairly uniform<BR>English-based pidgin spoken by Native Americans from
the East Coast to the<BR>West Coast. Yet I draw on another case for analogous
argument, the Hawaiian<BR>Islands: Long hailed by creolists as a bastion of
English pidgin-creole<BR>speaking since shortly after contact with James Cook in
1778, the Hawaiian<BR>Islands actually did not become so until the late 19th
century or the early<BR>20th century. What instead dominated as interethnic
medium throughout almost<BR>the entire 19th century was a Hawaiian-based pidgin,
which came to be<BR>relexified more and more by English only around the turn of
the century<BR>after the American take-over of the Islands. For further
documentation, see<BR>Julian M. Roberts, "Pidgin Hawaiian: a Sociohistorical
Study" in _Journal of<BR>Pidgin and Creole Languages_ 10: 1-56,
1995.<BR> With these findings comes an important
methodological conclusions: Let's<BR>not project back what applied in recent
history into early colonial periods,<BR>when in spite of obvious differences in
power the colonizers did not always<BR>dominate native peoples, but the latter
played a central role in the<BR>foreigners' survival overseas and often
maintained the upper hand much<BR>longer than conventional history teaches
us.<BR><BR>Aloha, Manny<BR><BR><BR>----- Original Message -----<BR>From: David
Robertson <<A
href="mailto:drobert@TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG">drobert@TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG</A>><BR>To:
<<A
href="mailto:CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>><BR>Sent:
12 March 1999 22:32<BR>Subject: "American Indian Pidgin English"<BR><BR><BR>>
Ayaq-ayaq,<BR>><BR>> Reading Drechsel ("North American contact languages
of the contiguous<BR>> United States", 1996), it would appear that AIPE is
not easily established<BR>> as an entity subject to
investigation.<BR>><BR>> In other words, it's difficult to speak of
AIPE...though one feels there's<BR>> something there...well, I must sign
off. More later.<BR>><BR>> Dave<BR><BR><BR>----- Original Message
-----<BR>From: Sally Thomason <<A
href="mailto:thomason@UMICH.EDU">thomason@UMICH.EDU</A>><BR>To: <<A
href="mailto:CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>><BR>Sent:
13 March 2000 03:47<BR>Subject: Re: "American Indian Pidgin English"<BR><BR>>
David and all,<BR>><BR>> I haven't seen thta particular
article (or book?) of<BR>> Drechsel's, but if he says that, he's
mistaken. AIPE has<BR>> been the subject of a number of scholarly
papers, some of<BR>> them very good. It's true that the number of
grammatical<BR>> features that cam be definitely established for AIPE<BR>>
(American Indian Pidgin English) is relatively small -- the<BR>>
documentation of the pidgin isn't super -- but there's enough<BR>> data to
show what some of the grammar was like. The<BR>> transitive suffix -em
that we were talking about earlier is<BR>> perhaps the most interesting
feature, since it's both systematic<BR>> in the AIPE documents and very
different from English grammar.<BR>><BR>> --
Sally<BR><BR><BR>----- Original Message -----<BR>From: David Robertson <<A
href="mailto:drobert@TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG">drobert@TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG</A>><BR>To:
<<A
href="mailto:CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>><BR>Sent:
14 March 1999 06:13<BR>Subject: Re: "American Indian Pidgin English"<BR><BR>>
Lhush san,<BR>><BR>> >From the same article by Emanuel Drechsel [pg.
1223]:<BR>><BR>> "What appears as Pidgin English in AIPE actually was an
amalgam<BR>> of partial native-language replacements (including English
relexi-<BR>> fications of Native American speech), stereotypical
presentations,<BR>> and superimposed hypercorrections by Europeans, who took
consider-<BR>> able freedom in documenting Native American speech and
perhaps<BR>> even drew on widely attested forms of non-Indian Pidgin
English<BR>> as models. By all indications, AIPE was not a genuine
pidgin,<BR>> but a 'broken' English that had literally been put into
the<BR>> Indians' mouth[s] and that recalls the modern analogy of
Indian<BR>> parts in Western novels, comic strips, and movies. These
have<BR>> frequently distorted Native American speech for the purpose
of<BR>> rendering it intelligible to their audience...."<BR>><BR>> --By
the way, one point in the above quotation touches on an idea I've<BR>> seen
considered in private discussions: Did those who had traveled<BR>>
extensively by sea, to places like West Africa, the Caribbean, China,
and<BR>> Polynesia, bring an understanding of a perceived widespread Pidgin
English<BR>> to the Northwest, and attempt to use it with Indian
people? That is one<BR>> way of accounting for alternants (in _Kamloops
Wawa_) such as "baibai" for<BR>> "alki", "katchem" for "tlap", "washem" for
"mamuk wash".--<BR>><BR>> Drechsel does offer cites for several
investigations of AIPE:<BR>><BR>> Flanigan, Beverly Olson 1981, i.e.
"American Indian English in history and<BR>> literature: the evolution of a
pidgin from reality to stereotype."<BR>> Doctoral diss., Indiana U.,
Bloomington.<BR>><BR>> Brandt, Elizabeth & Christopher MacCrate 1982,
i.e. "Make like seem heep<BR>> Injin': pidginization in the southwest."
_Ethnohistory_ 29:201-220.<BR>><BR>> Leap, William L. 1977, i.e. "The
study of American Indian English: an<BR>> introduction to the issues"
in William L. Leap (ed.), Studies in<BR>> Southwestern Indian English.
San Antonio: Trinity U. Press, 3-20.<BR>><BR>> ---- 1982, i.e. "The
study of Indian English in the U.S. Southwest:<BR>> retrospect and prospect"
in Florence Barkin, Elizabeth Brandt, and Jacob<BR>> Ornstein-Galicia (eds.),
Bilingualism and language contact: Spanish,<BR>> English, and Native
American languages. New York: Teachers College<BR>> Press,
101-119.<BR><BR>> Bartelt, Guillermo, Susan Penfield-Jasper, & Bates
Hoffer 1982, i.e.<BR>> Essays in Native American English" San Antonio:
Trinity U. Press.<BR>><BR>><BR>> LhaXayEm,<BR>>
Dave<BR><BR><BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>