/pLEX/ is Jargon?

[Sally Thomason]

Neither Montana Salish nor the northern Interior Salishan
languages would have been in contact with Chinookan languages,
either.  The fact (if it is a fact) that the word occurs in
Chinookan languages (Wasco, Clackamas) suggests that it's
one of those words that have traveled around the Northwest.
Not too surprising, given the gloss!  But it does make it
hard to pin down a source.  Because it occurs in both
Coast and Interior Salishan languages, the default assumption
would be that it's old in Salishan; of course it could have
come into Chinook Jargon from Salishan, rather than vice
versa.  So the next question is, how old is it in Chinookan
languages?  Henry's examples indicate at least that it has
been nativized into Chinookan morphology, but that's typical
enough anyway with loanwords, so it doesn't speak to the
age of the word in Chinookan.  Unfortunately, the sounds in
the word are all pan-Northwest, so they don't help with a
source; and the word is monomorphemic, so there are also no
morphological cues to the ultimate origin.  (With some
loanwords in, say, Nez Perce from Salishan, there are Salishan
suffixes that give away the direction of borrowing.  No such
luck here.)

   -- Sally

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