Implied pronouns in Chinook-Wawa?

David D. Robertson ddr11 at COLUMBIA.EDU
Wed Aug 27 17:49:52 UTC 2003


In all varieties of Jargon that I've seen:  You can say there are implied
pronouns (= "you", the 2nd person singular or plural) in commands, when
people did leave the pronoun out.  Example:  "Klatawa hyack!"  ("Go
quick!")  Note:  In some people's Chinook Jargon, as in some people's
English, it's optionally allowed to use the pronoun in a command.
Example:  "Mika klatawa hyack!"  ("You go quick!")

In what feel like more "pidginy" flavors of Jargon:  You can say there are
all kinds of implied pronouns ("I", "you", "he", "we", "they", etc.)
everywhere.  That is, some people seems to have left out pronouns not just
in commands, but also in questions, statements and so forth.  This may
have come from a conscious effort to talk in a pidgin-like way, I might
guess, since every natural language of the world, including Jargon, has
rules that make you use pronouns in certain contexts.  Example:  "Klatawa
kopa Seattle kopa 1860. Mamook kopa makook house kopa 1862."  ("I went to
Seattle in 1860.  I worked in a shop in 1862."  Note:  I hypothesize that
this wholesale omission of pronouns was perceived in the Jargon speech
community as less fluent usage than inclusion of pronouns.

At least in Grand Ronde Jargon:  I've been working on a pattern that
appears there, where there is no 3rd person singular pronoun ("yaka",
according to all the sources I've seen).  This will appear in a paper that
is still in progress on my desk; will report when done.

In summary:  You can always leave pronouns out when issuing commands in
Jargon.  Other than that, there are only limited circumstances where
omitting 'em works well.



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