Hey linguistics students: research X-tə́mtəm expressions, please!
Looking for a research paper idea?
The most vexing eternal question in Chinuk Wawa/Chinook Jargon research:
Image credit: Dawat-e-Islami
What, syntactically, is the tə́mtəm ‘heart’ in our X-tə́mtəm expressions of states of mind?
This is a hard ‘heart’ question!
I’ve researched this language for 30 years, and have come up with various analyses of this.
For starters, we say ɬúsh-tə́mtəm nayka ‘I’m happy’ (literally, good-heart I), and always meant & understood as ‘I’m happy’ and similar positive emotions. So the X-tə́mtəm constituent seems adjectival.
But syntactically, it’s the same formation as any Noun-Noun equative expression, and it can be read also as ‘I am a good heart’. — Although nobody every even thinks of it meaning that!
I’ve written about this question a number of times on this site, and have suggested it’s due to early Salish influence on Chinook Jargon, not that that will necessarily help you 😁
Well, my linguists, I wish you happy researching!
