Dunn, John A. "International Matri-Moieties"

[David D. Robertson]

Subtitled "The North Maritime Province of the North Pacific Coast".
Published in Seguin, Margaret (ed.)  "The Tsimshian:  Images of the Past,
Views of the Present".  Vancouver:  UBC Press, 1984.

He discusses the presence of similar words for similar kin relationships in
the languages of the Haida, Tsimshian, and Tlingit.  Perhaps this has a
bearing on the study of Chinook Jargon in Alaska and northern BC.

On pages 107-108, Dunn concludes:

"Linguistic games are an important feature of Tsimshian life (Rigsby
1970).  In my own contacts with Tsimshian people, impromptu etymologizing
and punning are a constant and major source of humour.  One story I was
allowed to record from Dorothy Brown of Kitkatla centres on a pun on a
chief's name.  Etymologies of names are recited at feasts (Vickers 1968).
Given this cultural level of linguistic awareness and dexterity and given
the presence of interpreter specialists (the lagaX'al'algyAX--
literally "they speak on both sides") in traditional and modern Tsimshian
society, it is inconceivable to me that the phonetic and semantic
relationships discussed in this paper went unnoticed.  In fact these
linguistic interrelationships must have come about, at least in part, as a
consequence of word-play.  If this is indeed the case, then these phenomena
are symptomatic of deep-seated traditional myth-based feelings about
interethnic relations, relations fraught with asymmetry, dependence,
opposition, exclusion, and inversion."

I (Dave) have read that the Haida looked down on Chinook Jargon, though
some certainly knew it and used it--not to mention the (earlier) Haida
Jargon--with outsiders.  Could it be that their attitudes toward these
contact languages reflected a traditional valuing of knowledge of the
Tsimshian and Tlingit languages and societies, which was seen as useful
because it promoted lasting interethnic ties?