Could ‘lamprey eel’ be Proto-Salish in origin?
Chinook Jargon’s skákʰwəl ‘lamprey eel’ is a weird-looking word, for having come from Chinookan languages.
That’s the best known information, as the very fine 2012 Grand Ronde Tribes dictionary of Chinuk Wawa reports. In tribal languages, the word appears to be known only in Shoalwater-Clatsop Lower Chinookan and in Clackamas Chinookan.
In those language, the weirdness is twofold.
- The word begins with what we have to take as the Dual number prefix (i)s- in Chinookan, which indeed signals “2 of” something; we don’t know a reason why Chinookan would think of eels as two of anything.
- And the root shape ~ kákʰwəl(i) is oddly long for Chinookan, which prefers much shorter noun roots on average.
Compare, now, the known ancient Proto-Salish Noun-marking prefix *s- and known root (i.e. *kʷutwal / *kʷutwan) for ‘lamprey eel’, which makes an incredibly close match with the Chinook Jargon form.
(By the way, this is a longish root for Salish, too. But let me point out that it can potentially be analyzed into the preferred Salish CVC root shape *kʷut (no meaning known yet), with the widespread Salish suffix *-(t)wal / *-(t)wan which appears to have had a meaning like ‘the other one; the other side’ and might conceivably denote the way you process lampreys, stretched open flat like this:)
Image credit: Michael Buck
A weakness in any argument for a Salish origin is that no reflex of P-S *s-kʷutwal / *s-kʷutwan is known in modern Salish languages that we know played a role in forming the Jargon: the Tsamosan and Tillamook branches of Salish. (It’s known farther away, in Stó:lō Coast Salish, in St̓át̓imcets and Secwepemctsín Northern Interior Salish, and throughout Southern Interior Salish languages.)
An indeterminacy is that we don’t know what a supposed P-S root ~ *kʷut might have meant. If we compare with Proto-Interior-Salish, there’s a potentially metathesized form (Salish has lots of such), ~ *tukʷ, having to do with fire and roasting…
A stipulation that’s need for the Salish-origin idea is that the word would’ve apparently been loaned into Chinookan before recorded history.
𛰅𛱁𛰃𛱂 𛰙𛱁𛱆𛰅𛱁 𛰃𛱄𛰙𛰃𛱄𛰙? qʰáta mayka tə́mtəm?
kata maika tumtum? Qu’en penses-tu?
What do you think?
And can you say it in Chinuk Wawa?
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