Hayne & Taylor re Yukon CJ

[Liland Brajant ROS']

David Robertson skribis kaj Mike Cleven prikomentis:
>
>>*page 87:  'The Indians talk a mixture of English and Hudson Bay
>>[presumably Chinook Wawa] trading jargon -- a word here and a word there,
>>and the rest by signs.'
>
>Ameslan is everywhere......

As long as we're being picky about whether HBTJ and CJ were the same, I
might as well point out that the "signs" referred to here were almost
certainly *not* Ameslan.  Ameslan (or ASL -- both are abbreviations for
"American Sign Language") and the aboriginal sign language of the Great
Plains of North America are two completely independent languages, and in
fact two completely different *kinds* of languages.  The Plains sign
language was an IAL, or pidgin, or both, intended to facilitate
communication among speakers of different languages. Ameslan is a
full-fledged language

     (note: in the sense that a creole may be said to be more fully
      fledged than its ancestral pidgins -- I'm not trying to put
      down the expressiveness or "full languagehood" of CJ, Esperanto, or
      any other IAL or pidgin)

used primarily by people for whom it is the (or at least a) native
language, and in communication with others of like fluency.  ASL is said
to be the third-most-used language in the United States.  Note also that
it is almost completely unrelated to Signed English, especially in terms
of syntax; and that in some respects ASL is more closely related to
French than to English.  Does anybody know anything about indigenous deaf
signing among NW Coast & Interior Native peoples before the introduction
of ASL?

Leland

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