"I reckon": Evidentials in southern BC Jargon

[Dave Robertson]

The word KLUNAS literally means "maybe", with a touch of "I don't 
necessarily think so", in all varieties of Jargon that I know of.  

At least one variety, Grand Ronde, also has ALAXTI for "maybe" with a touch 
of "I kind of think so".  

The southern interior BC variety that I'm examining in these shorthand 
letters has only KLUNAS.  

It can also use PUS, literally "if", to mark a proposition as "not 
necessarily so".  This little word can be in the same sentence with 
KLUNAS.  

What's interesting to me about KLUNAS in this variety is, it gets used in 
places where it doesn't seem to mean "maybe".  Instead I read it as an 
inference like "I reckon".

Look:

(1) A writer is expressing his regrets at not being able to visit Father Le 
Jeune because he can't afford the railway ticket:

"PUS NAIKA KAPSHWALA TRIN, *KLUNAS* NAIKA SKUKUM HAWS."
= "If I were to stow away on a train, *I reckon* I'd be in jail."
(SKUKUM HAWS is a verb here.)

(2a) A writer has just received Le Jeune's latest letter...:

"*KLUNAS* MAIKA TIKI KOMTAKS KOPA KAH SON IAKA PAIA NAIKA HAWS."
= "*Apparently* you want to know on which day it burned [down], my house."

(2b) ...this writer teases Le Jeune for not coming to visit in the 
wintertime:

"*KLUNAS* MAIKA IAHSUT ILO LON, KAKWA MAIKA ILO AIAK SHAKO KOPA NAIKA 
ILIHI."
= "*I reckon* your hair isn't long [enough to keep you warm], so you're in 
no hurry to come to my village."

This stuff looks to me like something not previously identified in Jargon, 
evidential marking.  That is, an indication of the evidence available to 
the speaker for a given statement.  (For that matter, the distinction in 
Grand Ronde between the two "maybes" seems mildly evidential, as do some 
uses of "PUS" in BC.  Nobody disputes that various languages encode 
evidential-type information in a range of ways, cf. the Balkan admirative 
mood.) 

Evidentials might be considered one of the fancy extra doo-dads that 
pidgins & creoles aren't supposed to have, as John McWhorter has proposed.  
I don't know that evidential marking is common in these languages, but 
Joanna Nichols (1986) has famously suggested it was routine in "Chinese" 
(Tungus) Pidgin Russian.  Steffensen (1989) found it in Kriol of Australia.

I was fascinated by Steffensen's observation that the Kriol speakers use 
their evidential particle "GEN" in an additional, extended, use: to express 
irony.  I think I see a little of that in BC Jargon.

One letter I've been working on is from a man whose good reputation was 
being smeared, and his tone of confidence in his own character and 
indignation at this treatment is clear in his very fluent writing.  He 
tells how someone has been saying "PUS NAIKA KALTASH MAN" and "PUS NAIKA 
ILO LATIT MITLAIT" ("that I'm a no-good man" and "that I've got no sense in 
my head").  At one point he repeats these phrases:

(3a) *KLUNAS* MAIKA KOMTAKS PUS NAIKA ILO LATIT MITLAIT...
= "*I reckon* you know that/if I've got no sense...

(3b) ...PI *KLUNAS* MAIKA KOMTAKS PUS NAIKA KALTASH MAN
= "...and *I reckon* you know that/if I'm a no-good man."

The writer isn't entertaining the least thought of himself actually being a 
bad guy.  And the priest he's writing to knows him well already, which is 
stated in the letter and is also clear from the many mentions of this man 
in Kamloops Wawa.  So the KLUNAS here doesn't mean "maybe".  The effect is 
evidential and mildly ironic.  

KOPIT NAIKA WAWA ALTA : That's all for now.  

--Dave R

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