Parkvall re Bakker re N. American pidgin genesis

[David Robertson]

LaXiyEm!

It's good to see the interest sparked by Bakker's points.

I think that Sally Thomason and Terrence Kaufman might have a more
pithy way of stating this, but let me try to summarize while simplifying:

Pidgins emerge in classic "trading" situations.  That is to say, in a
milieu of relatively casual and sporadic intergroup contact.  

Creole languages tend to come about in situations of more intense and
protracted interaction of groups.

I believe that Chinook Jargon is certainly a pidgin, and maybe one which
as they say "crystallized" into something with commonly followed
grammatical rules; a creole, that is.

From the earliest historical record of a Chinook-Jargon-looking language,
in Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) land on Vancouver Island, to the Chinooks'
contact with Lewis and Clark at the mouth of the Columbia River, and
thence chronologically to Puget Sound, north along the coast, and inland,
this language was first used in trade.  Let's include treaty negotiations
under the rubric of trade, as well.

Certainly missionaries played a huge role in the stabilization of Chinook
Jargon, perhaps more than immigration and settlement did.  The Indians who
converted to Christianity very often had constant contact with the
missionaries, and the missionaries, whether excellent linguists like
J.M.R. Le Jeune or admittedly bad ones like Myron Eells, tended to rely
on Chinook Jargon for proselytizing.

By contrast, I should suspect that only a relatively few Indian people,
spending a great deal of time in or near white settlements, had extended
contacts with whites.  

The point is that it's most likely that this language emerged in a classic
pidgin situation, and that if it creolized, it most likely did so due to a
newer situation of sustained, close contact among dissimilar groups.
--The best example of which is probably shown in the history of the Grand
Ronde Reservation tribes, being thrown together into a very small area
suddenly.  

Forgive me if I ramble.  I know I'm very tired after a long day of work
and research.

Best,
Dave





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On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Mikael Parkvall wrote:

> As a pidginist/creolist with limited knowledge of the American north-west
> who has recently joined the list, I find Dave Robertson's comments
> interesting. Why is it that some contexts generate pidgins, whereas others
> fail to do so?
> 
> One thing that struck me in Dave's suggestion that the relative rarity of
> mestizos would be responsible for pidginisation, is that this would imply
> that a pidgin didn't emerge until the arrival of whites in the area. What
> is the evidence for or against this?
> 
> Also, while most creolists hold that limited access to the alleged target
> language is responsible for pidginisation, I rather believe that it is a
> question of motivation. If so, what would have made people in the
> respective areas more eager to learn "proper" Huron or Cree (the eastern
> lingua francas), whereas the creators of Chinook Jargon wouldn't even have
> tried to learn "proper" Chinook? Is it a question of attitude towards the
> Chinooks (different from that which the neighbours of the Hurons and the
> Crees would have had vis a vis these tribes and their languages), or does
> it rather have to do with the nature of contacts?
> 
> 
> /MP
> 
> * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
> Mikael Parkvall
> Institutionen för lingvistik
> Stockholms Universitet
> S-10691 STOCKHOLM
> 
> +46 (0)8 16 14 41
> Fax: +46 (0)8 15 53 89
> 
> parkvall at ling.su.se
> 
> Creolist Archives: http://www.ling.su.se/Creole
>