Michif

Mikael Parkvall parkvall at ling.su.se
Tue Jul 17 09:03:39 UTC 2001


Rick McCallister wrote:

>How does Michif compare to Chinook jargon?

For me as a pidginist/creolist, the difference is huge. Although both
laymen and linguists usually equate "mixed language" with "pidgin" or
"creole", I would say that they have little to do with one another, except
in that both are possible (but rare) products of language contact.
Michif is a "mixed" or "intertwined" language par excellence. NPs from
French, and VPs (minus the NPs) from Cree. Neither component has undergone
any significant simplification, so that Michif nouns, for instance, have
two lexically inherent genders -- both the masculine/feminie of French, and
the animate/inanimate of Cree. It also has obviate marking, front rounded
vowels, and other crosslinguistically marked stuff.

A pidgin or a creole, on the other hand, is characterised by
reduction/simplification, if you ask me (though this is no longer a
politically correct view in creolistics, which no longer recognises any
difference between the development of, say, Tok Pisin from English, and the
development of, say, French from Latin (sic)). A pidgin or a creole need
not necessarily be very mixed in any sense.

Chinook Jargon is a pretty good case of a pidgin. Though most of the
lexicon is from Chinook, most of the quirks of the lexifier's grammar have
been lost. Anyone who has ever looked at Amerindian languages of this area
(the Pacific Northwest) must have noticed how fearsomely inflected they
are. And yet, Chinook Jargon was as nicely analytic as can be.

>Many years ago I saw a small book on Chinook Jargon that explained
>that the grammar was radically different from Chinook and that the
>vocabulary was largely derived from French --somewhere around 40% if I
>remember correctly. From what remember, French derived nouns included the
>feminine article <<la>>.

Different samples of CJ have different lexical composition, depending on
where, when and by whom it was spoken. In particular, the English part of
its lexicon increased as the languages died. Roughly speaking, the CJ
lexicon was around 50% Chinook, 20% French, 20% English and 5%+ Nootka.
Some of the French nouns, but not all, include incorporation of <la>.

>I don't think Chinook Jargon was used as anything other than a
>trade language but I may be mistaken

This is basically correct, though it did nativise in one place, namely the
Grand Ronde reservation in Oregon.

/MP

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Mikael Parkvall
Institutionen för lingvistik
Stockholms Universitet
SE-10691 STOCKHOLM

+46 (0)8 16 14 41, +46 (0)8 656 68 24 (home)
Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89

parkvall at ling.su.se

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