Origin of Chinuk-wawa

[Dave Robertson]

LhaXayEm, Linda,

Well...maybe I was calling the Nuu-chah-nulth, the K'alapuya, and the LhEw'al'mEsh "alien" to the Chinookans!  :-)

But seriously, your question is very astute and to the point, and makes me realize I'm revealing a theoretical prejudice as well as using the language's development as a rhetorical device!  An apparent preponderance of scholarship indicates that Chinook Jargon cannot be reliably projected into the pre-contact era.  This is as much a function of the limited predictive power of "contact linguistics", i.e. pidgin & creole studies and the like, as of my discipline's necessary reliance on historical testimony.
With regard to the latter, please let me emphasize that indigenous (and other) oral tradition is as eagerly welcomed a source of information as are Western written accounts.  However, I have not so far become aware of any knowledge handed down the generations which might discuss people's having spoken a pidgin variety of Chinookan or other Indian languages in this region in times more distant than about 1800.  I don't deny the possibility that such a contact language was used before then, but as you have noticed, I tend not to assume that such was the case.

It's really well worth noting (and I especially thank Henry and Tony for good discussions of this point) that Chinook Jargon was propagated to a crucially important degree *by Indian people*.  The fact that an extensive set of distinctively non-English, non-French, but characteristically Indian sounds has kept being consistently used in CJ for the span of its existence is of enormous importance for an understanding of the language's social history.

A related, also major, fact is that the majority of CJ words (those of non-European origin, that is) that I've so far found borrowed into Northwestern Indian languages *retain* the distinctively Indian sounds like /q'/, /kw/, /tl'/, which suggests that the Jargon was largely learned by Indians from Indians.  The implications of this observation are of great importance to the study of CJ.

These facts may not prove that a pidgin or Jargon of Chinookan or other indigenous origin antedated the arrival of Whites, but they at least make it more or less unfeasible to rule out the possibility.

I also admit that I (and the rest of the world) don't know whether comparable contact languages may have come into existence before contact
 with Whites in the Americas.  As our fellow list-member Emanuel Drechsel has extensively documented, it's not impossible that the Mobilian Jargon, based largely on Muskogean languages of the Gulf Coast area, may have originated as an inter-Indian medium.  (Please correct me if I'm mistaken on this point, Manny.)  Also, in California, which is sometimes described as having been comparable to New Guinea in terms of indigenous ethnic diversity, and elsewhere in the New World, it's quite imaginable that contact languages existed "prehistorically".

I'd better stop short here, as this discussion could go on much longer.  But you've sure put your finger on what is perhaps the aspect of Chinook Jargon most intensely debated among scholars.

Linda Fink <linda at FINK.COM> wrote:
>
> Dave, how do you know this is true? "This language's origin lies, in point
> of fact, in the events resulting from the contact of indigenous with alien
> cultures in this region."
>
> How do you know that CJ didn't arise from the contact of various tribes,
> each with its own language, before "alien cultures" arrived?
>
> Linda Fink
>
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