On CJ influence on Thompson River Salish & Alsea (in S.M. Egesdal)

[David Robertson]

Lhush chxi san,

Khupa Steven M. Egesdal ya bUk "Stylized Characters' Speech in Thompson
Salish Narrative" (Missoula, MT:  U. of Montana, 1992) nEsayka nanIch:

p. 24:  "Upper Thompson...interpret Meadowlark as singing a phrase that
originated in a post-contact tale.  Again, [a] flute-like song pattern is
used.

	[Th. Salish]  /wi'k-ne /su'sEkli
		      I see     Jesus Christ (via Chinook Jargon)"

p. 48-9:  "Frachtenberg offers a[n]...example of approximated foreign
speech in his Alsea texts.  As the editor Frachtenberg points out that the
original collector of one myth, Livingston Farrand, had incorrectly
accepted a raconteur's explanation that one of Kingfisher's lines was
Siuslaw.  Frachtenberg, drawing on his greater knowledge of Alsea and
Siuslaw, realized that Kingfisher's speech was only approximated Siuslaw.

	3.2e "Ha'ltcatcni'i, ha'ltcatcni'i, lha'kutsxatci kwitu'!"

Frachtenberg (1920:1156, n.9) comments:  'Farrand claims that this
sentence consists of Siuslaw words.  This assertion is only partially
correct.  The first word (ha'ltcatc) is not a Siuslaw vocable, nor can it
be etymologized as an Alsea word.  The second is an Alsea pronoun
["]something["].  Lha'kutsxatci is a Siuslaw word and consists of lhaku-
["]to take["]; -tsx imperative; tci 2nd person plural.  kwitu is a
corruption for the French couteau, ["]knife["], borrowed through the
medium of Chinook Jargon.'"

Also this, in a fascinating discussion of mythological characters in
Northwest Indian stories being represented as speaking (more or less)
another tribe's language:

p. 45:  "Approximated speech reflects a general tendency found in language
contact situations:  Content words such as 'grizzly bear,' 'husband,' and
'die' are more readily borrowed -- albeit not perfectly -- than function
words such as the possessive prefix or (the lacking) connective particles
such as complement markers."


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