‘HALF’ as an Indigenous metaphor

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We’re familiar with a number of Chinuk Wawa expressions built from sitkum (‘half’), used metaphorically, to describe a noun.

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A ‘half-crane’ (image credit: Bird Web)

Check it out:

  • One example from the 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary is sitkum-łiʔil (literally, ‘half-black’) to mean ‘brown’.
  • We also know sítkum-táyí (literally, ‘half-chief’) as an established phrase for a mid-level traditional leader.
  • Another instance of sitkum getting used as ‘sorta’ is sitkum-saliks (literally ‘half-angry’) for someone who’s ‘gruff’.
  • And I’ve spoken Chinuk Wawa with fluent folks who use sitkum quite freely as an adverb that’s kinda equivalent to normal Pacific Northwest English “kind of”.

I’m here today to propose, yet again, that a Chinook Jargon phenomenon has a strong Indigenous-language parallel. This use of sitkum might be quite old.

It’s my work with łəw̓ál̓məš, i.e. Lower Chehalis Salish of Shoalwater Bay in Washington, that raised my awareness of this connection.

(Here’s a mixed [sitkum?] metaphor from the get-go: my readers will remember that Lower Chehalis is one of the 4 “parent” languages of Chinuk Wawa.) 

There’s an adverb in Lower Chehalis, kʷáʔc / kʷác / k̓ʷəc̓ / xʷác̓ / x̣ʷác̓ / xʷás, that functions to express ~’kind of; like’. That wild variation in its pronunciation is a telltale indication that this is a longtime word in that language — one that’s had time to go through lots of experiences, and be altered by frequent use.

Some examples of metaphorically used kʷáʔc (etc.) in Lower Chehalis:

  • the term that seems to denote the bird we call the ‘bittern’ in English: kʷáʔc sq̓ʷás (literally ‘half-crane’ / ‘half-heron’ … hayu masi to Jedd Schrock for a discussion that led to noticing this)
  • k̓ʷəc̓-ús (literally ‘half-eyed / half-face(d)’), translated by elders as ‘one eye gone’
  • síw x̣ʷác̓ ‘not enough’ (literally ‘too(.much) half(ways)’

I take this Lower Chehalis adverb as a more-or-less grammaticalized usage of the identical adjective root meaning ‘half’.

And this parallels Chinuk Wawa’s sítkum, whose functions span:

  • an adjective (and/or quantifier) ‘half’,
  • an adverb ‘half[way]’ [and ‘kind of’ and ‘mid(dle of)’],
  • and a noun ‘a half; the middle (of)’.

Not all of these functions are pointed out in the 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary.

The age and directionality of this Salish-CW semantic sharing remains to be worked out. The same root for ‘half’, etc., exists throughout Southwest Washington Salish. (The “Tsamosan” languages, to a linguist.) It has similar uses in each of those languages. So it’s wholly, entirely — see what I’m doing there? — possible that the Indigenous Salish usage was historically the model for the Jargon metaphor.

Kata maika tumtum?
What do you think?

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