tyee / tia

[Tom Larsen]

Having never read Moulton, I'm a little hesitant to jump back into this. 
But I don't, off the top of my head, see any real reason to assume that 
CJ tayi was (or was not) borrowed into Lower Chinook.  If I'm not 
mistaken, it has been documented that Chinookan peoples of the lower 
Columbia were using CJ at that time of the L & C expedition, right?  And 
it would be reasonable to assume that if Lower Chinookan peoples were 
trying to communicate with white folks such as members of the Corps of 
Discovery, they would most likely attempt to communicate using CJ rather 
than their native languages, right?  So, do we know for sure what 
language was being spoken when whoever it was said that those beads were 
called tia Commáshuck´?  If we knew for sure that tia Commáshuck´ was 
the name of these things in Lower Chinook, then Dell's parsing of this as

t-ia-q'mus-akS
PL/prefix-his-bead-PL/suffix

may well be correct.  But in lieu of information to the contrary, do we 
know for sure that L & C were not just given the CJ name of these beads? 
  If tia Commáshuck´ is a CJ term, then it would be perfectly reasonable 
to assume that tia Commáshuck´is an attempt to spell something like tayi 
q'musakS.  And of course tayi q'musakS would mean, quite transparently, 
'chief beads', would it not? Now I don't know whether there is any 
documentation of a word like q'musakS ever being used in CJ, but it 
could have been.  There are obviously many Lower Chinook words in CJ, 
and some of them have retained their prefixes (e.g., tiya7wit 'leg' < 
t-ia-7wit 'his leg' ... or is it 'legs' ... help!) and some of them lose 
their prefixes (e.g., kEnim 'canoe' < i-kEnim), and it's not too far 
fetched to assume that at least some CJ speakers used the Lower Chinook 
word q'musakS, trimming off it's prefixes and leaving the suffix. And 
none of this would require one to assume that the word tayi had been 
borrowed into Lower Chinook, though it could have been.  But even if it 
had been, it may have only been used in certain fixed phrases (like, 
perhaps, tayi q'musakS?) and not as a replacement for the regular word 
for chief -ka'naX.

As for Henry's question about why Silverstein and Moore would claim that 
there were two words tayi and tia, I certainly can't answer that; but I 
can think of at least two very reasonably explanations for it.  One 
might be that they know something we don't.  They know a lot more about 
Chinookan languages than I do at least, so that's a real possibility. 
The other possible explanation is that they (or Moulton?) are just wrong.

-- 
Tom Larsen

Branford Price Millar Library
Portland State University
P.O. Box 1151
Portland, OR 97207-1151

phone: 503-725-8179
fax:   503-725-5799

email: larsent at pdx.edu


hzenk at pdx.edu wrote:
> Alan,
> 
> Yes, I suppose that the term could have been borrowed into Chinookan from CJ.
> If it was, though, it apparently later dropped out of Chinookan usage, as the
> word for chief as later recorded is the one Tony cites, and neither Boas nor
> anyone else records anything like tia.  Things like that do happen, of course.
> As with wapato, it may be that Lewis and Clark themselves are our best
> authority that the word was "really" Chinookan.  Henry
> 
> Quoting "Alan H. Hartley" <ahartley at D.UMN.EDU>:
> 
> 
>>Thanks, Henry.
>>
>>What if, instead of "in Chinookan the term is tia" we were to read "the
>>term was borrowed into Chinookan [from CJ from Nootkan tayi] as taye"?
>>The phrase "ti-a, co-mo-shack which is Chief beads" as Dell has parsed
>>it certainly gives one pause (and note that Clark writes ti-â
>>[a-circumflex] might suggest [a] rather than [e]), but against that is
>>Clark's (and Lewis's) gloss 'Chief(s) beads'. Or we might be dealing
>>with two  near homographs of tia, one [tia] meaning 'PL/prefix-', the
>>other [taye] meaning 'chief', though, given L&C's glosses, that seems
>>unlikely. (The first two quotes below seem especially clear.)
>>
>>we were visited by our near neighbours, Chief or Tiá, Co-mo-wool..and
>>six Clatsops. [3 Jan 06 ML 6.162]
>>
>>I was visited by Tia Shâh-hâr-wâr-cap and eleven of his [Cathlamet]
>>nation in one large canoe [10 Jan 06 ML 6.192]
>>
>>These coarse blue beads are their f[av]orite merchandiz, and are called
>>by them tia Commáshuck´ or Chiefs beads. [17 Jan 06 ML 6.215]
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>
>>>That might explain a Chinookan pronunciation of Jargon (from Nootkan) tayi,
>>
>>but
>>
>>>it won't explain why Silverstein and Moore (cited by Moulton as authority
>>
>>for
>>
>>>the Chinookan notes) would claim that there were two words, Jargon tayi
>>
>>and
>>
>>>Chinookan tia (if indeed they DID claim that, as opposed to an editor
>>
>>somehow
>>
>>>garbling things here; Rob Moore, are you still lurking out there?).  For
>>
>>the LC
>>
>>>journal entry appearing in Moulton v. 6 p. 163, "our near neighbour Chief
>>
>>(or
>>
>>>tia)," a note on p. 164 reads:  "in Chinookan the term is tia [italicized].
>>
>> In
>>
>>>the Chinook jargon it is tayi [italicized], which is borrowed from the
>>
>>Nooktan
>>
>>>word ta:yi: [ital.]; all mean 'chief'."  I wrote to Dell Hymes some time
>>
>>ago
>>
>>>about this:  he finds no word like tia in any of his Chinookan sources;
>>>moreover, "it does not look like a Chinookan noun at all."  On the other
>>
>>hand,
>>
>>>the LC journal entry in Moulton v. 6 p. 81, "ti-a, co-mo-shack which Chief
>>>beads," could be perfectly OK Chinookan, granting only that the original
>>>meaning was "his beads" (he being the chief?).  A note on p. 82 interprets
>>
>>the
>>
>>>Chinookan as tiaq'musakS [italicized; stress over u; S = shibilant].
>>
>>Hymes
>>
>>>parses:
>>>
>>>t-ia-q'mus-akS
>>>PL/prefix-his-bead-PL/suffix
>>
>