Henry's followup: Early linguists using CJ w/native people? (fwd)

[David Robertson]

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 21:08:20 -0800 (PST)
From: Henry Zenk <psu18009 at pdx.edu>
To: David Robertson <drobert at TINCAN.TINCAN.ORG>
Cc: CHINOOK at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Subject: Re: Henry's followup:  Early linguists using CJ w/native people?

Hi Dave,

Regarding linguists who used CJ, I suspect Boas may have been more like
the last than the first.  Both Gatschet and Dorsey, who were in Oregon in
the 1870s and 1880s, were able to get by with English:  they simply
located Indians who could use English well enough, and depended on
them.  Neither learned to speak Jargon, but that is hardly surprising,
really, because both were here only for relatively brief periods--a matter
of months, not of the visits extending over years that Boas
undertook.  Perhaps Boas picked it up just because he spent a lot more
time around NW Indians, which gave him both more  opportunity to learn it,
and more occasions for it to be useful (he could talk to more people that
way, not just the ones who could speak English).  Interestingly, among the
Dorsey and Gatschet mss, there are Powell vocabulary outlines with Jargon
equivalents entered for printed English words:  in both cases, I suspect
these were prepared for use in the field, that is, as prompt sheets for
working with non-English speaking Indians.  But, it is clear that neither
man learned to speak.  Nor did Jacobs, years later.  I remember a poignant
notation in one of his Molala field notebooks:  the informant, Kate
Chantelle, had limited English, and Jacobs observes he probably could have
gotten more information if he were able to speak Jargon.

By the way, I took a look at the OHS reprint of the 1853 S.J. McCormick
dictionary after writing my last message.  There are certainly some pretty
clear indications there of a French-speaking compiler:  French spellings
of French-derived Jargon words; silent "h"; and "r" used to represent the
velar and uvular fricatives of Indian pronunciations.  So, Blanchet indeed
could have been involved.  Perhaps there is even some documentation
somewhere in his correspondence preserved at the dioescesan archives in
Portland.  Anyone who is interested should realize that it is mostly in
French.  Henry

On Mon, 8 Mar 1999, David Robertson wrote:

> LhaXayEm, pi wEXt hayash mersi khapa mayka, Henry,
>
> You bring up a very good question, and you make me realize that I do not
> know whether any other *early* linguists used CJ to communicate with their
> indigenous informants.  Was Boas the first?  Did it take a while for the
> practice to catch on?
>
> Suggestions like yours, for research that needs to be done, are highly
> valuable in our field.  (I think in a similar way of the many concise
> statements in Kinkade & Czaykowska-Higgins' Salish linguistics volume, to
> the effect that "little work has been done yet on such-and-such".)  I hope
> that someone will do research on issues like the actual authorship and
> conditions of composition of several early sources; not only Demers /
> "Demers", but also materials such as the early Nootkan vocabularies.
>
> Maybe on a vacation some time, you'll be able to write something up about
> it!
>
> Lhush pulakli...wek saya sItkEm pulakli.
> Dave
>
>
>
>  *VISIT the archives of the CHINOOK jargon and the SALISHAN & neighboring*
> 		    <=== languages lists, on the Web! ===>
> 	   http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/salishan.html
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>