Chinuk Wawa’s genderless “yaka” is due to Salish Indigenous influence

The more you research & think deeply into a subject, the more insights you may have.In the 30th year of my work with Chinook Jargon, it’s just occurred to me:

Image credit: “Sacred Gender” by Salish Style,
available for purchase direct from that artist

The genderlessness, or gender-inclusivity, of the 3rd person singular animate pronoun yaka ~ yax̣ka, is quite possibly due to a Salish input. 

That’s a weird thing to say, when you consider that yaka (and its alternate, more conservative form yax̣ka) came from the unrelated Chinookan language(s)! 

And we know that the pronoun word yax̣ka meant, very definitely, ‘he / him / his’ — it was gendered — in Chinookan! If you wanted a feminine reference in Lower Chinookan (Clatsop-Shoalwater), you said ax̣ka instead. 

Plus, Chinookan 3rd-person singular verbs themselves, quite aside from these pronoun words, which are optional anyways, are also mandatorily gendered. You have to specify gender in the verbal inflection, so agúikəl ‘she saw it’ cannot be said when you mean ačúikəl ‘he saw it’.

We also know that the corresponding words, the 3rd-person pronouns, in both English and French (the remaining “parent” languages of Chinuk Wawa) are strictly gendered as well. Hundreds of my readers can verify that you’re not allowed to say he for she, or elle for il, in those two Indo-European languages, under any normal circumstances.

Only in SW Washington Salish (which is also known as the “Tsamosan” branch of that language family), in languages such as Lower Chehalis (which, notably, was called “Chinook” for the first century or so of its being documented by outsiders), can you use one & the same word for female & male 3rd-person referents. That pronoun word is cə́n̓, in case you’d like to know.

As with Chinookan, Salish verbs are not normally accompanied by any pronoun word. But Salish verbs are equally as genderless in the 3rd person as the Salish pronoun system is. So, Lower Chehalis wákʷsən is used for both ‘she goes’ and ‘he goes’.

So it’s reasonable that we add the genderlessness of Chinook Jargon’s 3rd-person singular yaka to our now very lengthy list of CJ traits that indicate a previously unnoticed, but enormous, Salish heritage from the very start of this pidgin/creole language.

Counter-argument:

It’s possible that the lack of gender in CJ yaka may be due to the sheer process of pidginization that occurred, regardless of the nature of the 4 parent languages. No particular source language need be implicated, in that view.

Counter-counter-argument:

However, the stamp of Salish syntax, i.e. of the functions and positions that word-forms get used in, on CJ is so pervasive (for example, in negation of clauses, and in the large number of X-tə́mtəm idioms), that I find an attribution of genderless yaka to a Salish model to be the best positive hypothesis.

Bonus fact:

That word cə́n̓ can optionally be expanded to cə́n̓-tiʔ to specify plurality, ‘they’. This Salish numberlessness is a fact that I additionally take as the likely earliest source for the optional plural usage of Chinuk Wawa’s yaka.

ikta mayka chaku-kəmtəks?
What have you learned?