short reply Re: CJ origin

[Sally Thomason]

I definitely agree with Mike that it's unfortunate
when explorations into history become politicized.
The search for a "pure" CJ is doomed, as is the
search for any "pure" language; languages reflect
their history, including historical connections
among peoples, in vocabulary as well as in grammar.

One further "origins" comment: while the linguistic
evidence for a pre-contact origin of CJ isn't conclusive,
the linguistic evidence AGAINST an origin in a
Nootka-Chinook trade jargon or pidgin really is very
strong -- at least if the Nootka-Chinook jargon hypothesis
includes the Nootka words that exist in CJ as we know it.
The reason is that those Nootka words *must* have been
brought to CJ by Whites, not by Natives: they are all
phonologically distorted by elimination of Native sounds
that Whites couldn't (or anyway didn't) pronounce.  The
rest of CJ vocabulary, as I said earlier, is phonologically
Native; it fits the areal Northwest patterns of sounds
very closely.

   It's a lot more likely that the origin of CJ lies in
a slave jargon, used between Chinookan masters and their
Native slaves; I think (but I'm not sure) that Dell Hymes
was the first to suggest this possibility.  This hypothesis
is strengthened by a passage Dave discovered a while back
about a Nez Perce "slave jargon", used with slaves only;
and by other reports, from other continents, about pidgins
developing in contact situations because speakers of the
vocabulary-base language deliberately simplified & otherwise
distorted their language in talking to outsiders, in order
to keep outsiders from getting full access to their culture.

   -- Sally