tyee / tia

[Alan H. Hartley]

Tom Larsen wrote:
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.

I should perhaps have said that CJ [tayi] might have been pronounced
[taye] by the Chinookans. I guess it depends whether one deems the
Chinookan use of tayi as borrowing, or as the use of CJ in a contact
situation, and we probably don't have enough info to decide. (There
probably isn't a clearcut distinction between the two, anyway.)

do we know for sure what language was being spoken when whoever it was
said that those beads were called tia Commáshuck´?

Here again, probably insufficient data.

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.

I think you're right: they were probably hearing a canned phrase from
CJ, perhaps a blend of (ultimately Nootkan) tayi and Chinookan q'musakS.
The latter was definitely used in CJ: Gibb's Dictionary (1863), for
instance, has "Ka-mo´-suk, n.  Chinook..Beads.  Tyee kamosuk (chief
beads), the large blue glass beads."

Thanks to Tom and all, for the really helpful input.

Alan