clemel et al

[Sally Thomason]

Sorry, I haven't been keeping up with the list lately, so
probably someone has already said this about the etymology
of Chinook Jargon tL'm at n (often spelled klimin or the like)
`soft, fine in substance, ground up', but just in case:
my notes give a Kathlamet Chinook source, L7man `act of
breaking, state of being soft' (p. 275 in Dell Hymes'
1955 dissertation on Kathlamet).  As someone has no
doubt said, there's quite a bit of l/n alternation in
Pacific Northwest languages.   The earliest CJ attestations
I've found for this word are from the 1840s, unless that
Ross entry clemel is the same word -- which it may not be,
given the largeish difference in the gloss.  The glosses
given in 19th-century CJ sources are things like `smashed,
mashed, rendered soft, soften'; for `flour', they tend
to use a two-word phrase with saplil, e.g. Stuart's klimmin
sapalil `flour' (1865).

  But of course the word could easily have been around in
Chinook Jargon for much longer, and in addition Chinookan
speakers could have spread it (or its cognate in another
Chinookan language) to trading partners along the coast,
even before CJ existed.

  -- Sally