P. Bakker re 3 factors tending against pidgins in N. America

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Hi.  Well, a couple factors which might have prompted the development
of the Jargon occur to me, from my layman's, guess-and-by-golly way
of reckoning:

On the frontier, communication across cultures and languages was not
merely useful and profitable, it was necessary for survival.  The
very first whites could never have made it out here without the
willing native assistance and hospitality which was freely extended
for the first several decades.

The Jargon died out not only with the near-demise of the natives but
also with the establishment of English as the universal language of
the far West in the mid-19th century.  During the Jargon's heyday, it
was genuinely uncertain for a while whether we would end up speaking
English, French, German, or perhaps even something else out here.  (A
few centuries earlier Chinese had some potential, and Mike Cleven's
tracing of such native words which found their way into the
jargon--such as "Tyee"--from Mandarin are intriguing.)

Whites may have been able to handle other native languages better
than those found around here.  I have read that the Germanically
complex and guttural proper Chinookan was difficult for whites to
grasp and virtually impossible for whites to pronounce.  (I wonder
sometimes how much of Tony's Jargon pronunciation is the result of
his ancestry or of his dental work.)  Also, the linguistic diversity
among the natives here fostered the development of a pantribal jargon
rather than the adoption of one particular native language as a
secondary trading tongue.

Regards,

Jeff


On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 11:58:34 +0200, you 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
>
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>
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>
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