Tlingit CJ sound system? Q's about S.V. Johnson thesis

[Sally Thomason]

I sent my comments on CJ phonology before reading Mike
Cleven's response to Dave's message, and I guess I should
clarify my point.  It's easy to show that there was (and
perhaps still is) a consistent CJ phonology across Native
speakers of the pidgin, from the 19th century through the
mid-20th century.  The evidence, as I said in my earlier
message, is in the consistent pronunciations recorded from
speakers of a variety of Native languages by different
linguists over a period of about 70 years, and there's also
indirect evidence in many wordlists published by non-Native
laymen.  The evidence is especially striking precisely when
a particular speaker speaks CJ with sounds that don't occur
in his native language.  Of course this doesn't mean that
the pidgin was, or is, without variation; all languages have
lots of variation, including dialect differences in different
regions.  As for differences between Natives and Whites, most
Whites (again, through the mid-20th century) don't seem to have
learned the non-European sounds of CJ; that's why it's so clear
that CJ must have been transmitted from Native to Native, not
from Native to White to Native.

The word "skookum" doesn't, as far as I know, show up with
a "hard" (glottalized) k in any of the older materials, or
have one etymologically.  If it has one nowadays, it might
be the "hyperforeignization" phenomenon that other people
have found in other languages, where speakers extend "exotic"
pronunciations beyond their etymologically expected domains
into new words -- deliberate extension, that is.

  -- Sally