“There is” a semantic parallel between French & Jargon
Today’s post is the sketch of an idea.
Image credit: Madame Conjugaison
In French, which is one of the parent languages of Chinuk Wawa,
- “y” means ‘there; thither; about it’, etc., so
- il y a ‘there is’ = miɬayt, a verb that automatically includes the sense of ‘be (t)here‘
- j’y suis ‘I’m (t)here‘ = nayka miɬayt
- “en” means ‘movement away; indefinite quantity (“of it”)’, so
- s’en aller ‘to leave (literally to go from (t)here)‘ = ɬatwa, a verb that automatically includes the sense of ‘go there’
- marche-t’en ‘walk away / from there‘ = perhaps mash, a verb that means ‘to leave a place’
There’s also chaku, a verb that automatically includes the sense of ‘come here’. It would correspond to French s’en venir, which I’m told is (how interesting!) a specifically Canadian usage, being a Normandy regionalism and elsewhere archaic in France.
It seems to me that the fact that there’s a separate word in both English and French to express this, but it’s done only with one word in Chinook would show that it’s the opposite of a parallel, no? If it actually paralleled the French you would expect the need for “(kopa) yawa/yakwa”, possibly with the French word order as well.
I see a difference, not a similarity if anything.
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Good point — but if I expand my terse note — my thought is that unlike some other ancestor languages of Chinuk Wawa (such as English) — both French and CW mandatorily include “there” in these locative/directional verbs. I know, not a huge strong argument, but there you have the parallel that I’m sensing. — Dave R
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Ha, writing while tired. Add on — English doesn’t need or like the “there” there (except in the existential/locative). Whereas, for whatever reason, casual French of the kinds that came to influence Jargon does like to include “y”/”en” in these various expressions. And so to bed
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It’s not really my expertise for sure, but it’d be interesting to see if this happens in any other French-derived pidgins around the world. Also, you’ve probably already thought about this, but it’d be nice see how they express this in Chinookan, Salish, and Nuu-Chah-Nulth and see if they do something similar.
Seems like your argument would be more likely if speakers only ever (or just mostly) heard folks say etre/venir/aller with these y/en expressions, but I would think they’re common enough in speech without the y/en that folks would have noticed the additional words needed in there.
Intuitively it just seems that the implied “there” of tlatwa/chaku/mitlait would make sense to have developed in the pidgin itself rather than borrowing in a convoluted way like that. I can imagine a non-fluent/early speaker just shouting “ɬatwa/chaku/miɬayt” pointing in a direction enough times that the point becomes implied if you know what I mean. Obviously I have no evidence for that.
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