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<DIV>----- Original Message -----
<DIV>From: "Dave Robertson" <<A
href="mailto:TuktiWawa@NETSCAPE.NET">TuktiWawa@NETSCAPE.NET</A>></DIV>
<DIV>To: <<A
href="mailto:CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG">CHINOOK@LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG</A>></DIV>
<DIV>Sent: Monday, February 12, 2001 5:07 PM</DIV>
<DIV>Subject: Re: Origin of Chinuk-wawa</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV>> I also admit that I (and the rest of the world) don't know whether
comparable contact languages may have come into existence before contact<BR>>
with Whites in the Americas. As our fellow list-member Emanuel
Drechsel has extensively documented, it's not impossible that the Mobilian
Jargon, based largely on Muskogean languages of the Gulf Coast area, may have
originated as an inter-Indian medium. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken
on this point, Manny.) Also, in California, which is sometimes described
as having been comparable to New Guinea in terms of indigenous ethnic diversity,
and elsewhere in the New World, it's quite imaginable that contact languages
existed "prehistorically".<BR></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Greetings from Hawai'i,</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>This is just to confirm that I have indeed argued for the pre-European
origin of Mobilian Jargon or the Chickasaw-Choctaw trade language of the lower
Mississippi River valley, on grounds of its semantactic pattern, especially its
OsV word order, its pervasive functions in traditional Southeastern Indian
societies, and its geographic distribution, overlapping quite closely with that
of the pre-European Mississippian Complex (see my book <EM>Mobilian Jargon:
</EM><EM>Linguistic and Sociohistorical Aspects of a Native American
Pidgin</EM>. Oxford University Press, 1997). You might be further
interested that Sally Thomason has also argued for the pre-European origin
of Delaware Jargon (see "On Interpreting 'The Indian Interpreter'" in
<EM>Language in Society</EM>, Vol. 9, Pp. 167-93, 1980). As she has already
explained in her response of yesterday, we cannot prove the pre-European
existence of Mobilian Jargon or, for that matter, Chinook Jargon or Delaware
Jargon by any rigid measure and it remains a hypothesis if the most
convincing one to me at this time. </DIV>
<DIV> I am less confident about the existence of an indigenous
pidgin in California simply because so far I have not come across any solid
linguistic or other evidence for such in spite of the area's great linguistic
diversity. This raises an interesting question: Why indigenous pidgins in
northwestern, northeastern, and southcentral North America, but not in other
areas such as native California and the Southwest with equal or even greater
linguistic diversity? We don't have a clear answer yet, but we can be confident
that it lies in the sociohistorical domain, i.e. how native groups of diverse
linguistic backgrounds interacted with each other in terms of their economies
and politics. Perhaps Sally has some comments to add on this topic.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Aloha, Manny</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Emanuel J. Drechsel</DIV>
<DIV>Liberal Studies</DIV>
<DIV>University of Hawai'i</DIV>
<DIV>Honolulu, HI 96822</DIV>
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