Slavery as a factor in language contact

[coyotez]

My answers below...

>===== Original Message From "David D. Robertson" <ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU> =====
>Dell, Dave, khanawi-lhaksta,
>
>As most of my training and study is outside the discipline of anthropology,
>let me ask you who know more:  Has there been much study specifically of
>slavery as a factor in language contact?

Yes there has been articles, although at this time I can not cite the articles
I've read in the past. As for studies of such, that would be difficult. We
would have to look at international indigenous studies, for those cultures who
maintain slavery.

And specifically in the
>Northwest, have researchers happened to learn very much from Native people
>about who spoke what language in which slaveholding households?

I have read articles that mention slavery is a factor, especially when women
are taken from other tribes and enslaved. Women teach the children their own
language, until the children, at a certain age, are initiated into young
adulthood, that then may never speak the mothers language. (this is the
subject of a recent article based on Amazonian tribes, In one of the
Anthropology Journals, possibly AA) This is what I remember of the article. So
if some of this is true, then some people from mixed tribal "marriages" may
then be naturally bilingual, or multilingual depending on the local jargons in
use (CJ or HJ, NJ, and sign language).

Women were definitely the subject of slavery. In our Ourigan article, Scott
(Mr. Lurker, LOL) and I found references to ooligan trade routes where
hundreds of Ooligan grease human packers would travel over the Coast Ranges
with boxes of the grease to trade with the interior peoples.

>
>That is, has anyone methodically looked into what influence, if any,
>slavery has on people's language use?

That would be an interesting study, especially for the Northwest.

>
>It's a routine claim in "creolistics" (you can call the discipline by other
>names, or leave out the shock quotes) that conditions like plantation
>slavery and indentured servitude have had a decisive role in birthing
>contact languages.  On the surface it's obvious that for example
>extirpation from Africa, followed immediately by permanent stranding as a
>slave in the New World, in constant contact with a significant population
>not speaking your mother tongue, would compel you to improvise some way of
>communicating.  Presumably, you'd adopt some simplified form of somebody's
>language(s)--a pidgin, let's say.
>
>But has this been proven beyond doubt to be true?

Check the Amazonian article, I'll attempt to find it, in my rapidly expanding
files.

>
>And does the same intuition apply to the kinds of slavery practiced along
>the Pacific Northwest coast?

By analogy, it does compare, but these analogies have been wrong before. Ex:
hunter-gatherer theory does not hold true for PNW and so must be altered to
fit by being called COMPLEX Hunter-gatherers.
>
>Or did the common situation, in which at least one person in a village had
>a multilingual household, and there was a continual trend of marrying
>outside the ethnic group, provide a weaker stimulus for pidgin genesis than
>the "plantation" model?  (Because there'd very often be someone around who
>could interpret Language X, the speaker of X might have small need to learn
>the local Language Y.)  In the latter case, was it only from approximately
>the time of Contact with non-Indians that pidgin genesis (from Chinookan,
>English, Haida, 'Nootkan' sources and so on) was strongly motivated?
>

All good questions waiting to be answered. Saghaley is in need of attention,
bye.
>-- Dave

David Lewis
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde
Department Of Anthropology
University of Oregon