Zenk re: Southern boundary of CW

[David Robertson]

[Forwarded by Dave R.]

Had meant to jump into this sooner.  Re:
>
> -----CW loanwords are found, if only in small numbers, in several 
languages
> on the California side of the state line.
>
> -----Multilingualism may have been more common in that area than farther
> North.  Examples involve aboriginal languages as well as Spanish.

Multilingualism was very prevalent on the lower Columbia, to judge from the
known language repertoires of many individuals during the 19th c.  E.g.
knowledge of two or more tribal languages plus Chinuk Wawa (plus, as time 
went
on, English) was the norm for adult members of the late 19th-c. Grand Ronde
community.  Indeed, multilingualism and the prevalence of local exogamy in 
the
lower Columbia are what inform Yvonne Hajda's deep scepticism about CW's
aboriginal origin--she doesn't accept that a region so multilingual and
cross-linked through ties of intermarriage would have required a pidgin.

By the way, Yvonne has just published an article entitled "Slavery in the
Greater Lower Columbia Region" (in Ethnohistory 52(3):563-588).  She doesn't
discuss CW in this article, but the nature of slavery as she describes it 
for
the region reinforces my sense that Lower Columbia society may well have had
need of, if not necessarily an aboriginal trade pidgin, at least, a 
simplified
form of Chinookan to facilitate communication with foreigners from distant
groups.  Chinookans took their slaves mainly from distant groups, and 
judging
by historical accounts these could include adults (mainly young women), 
people
who could not be expected to have had previous experience of Chinookan. 
Chinookan languages tend to be perceived as extremely difficult, not only by
European language speakers, but by other local Indians as well.  One 
question I
have is whether other languages of the Lower Columbia, e.g. the various 
Salish
languages, have anywhere near the number of uninflected particles (including
many suggesting varying degrees of onomatopoeia) known for Chinookan.  I 
know
that some of these particles are shared with Lower Chehalis.  But are 
particles
anywhere near as large a chunk of the lexicons of local Salish languages as 
they
are of Chinookan languages? Henry

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