Chumash Narrative Folklore and How People Spoke

But when a culture has been drastically altered through acculturation, how can its original speech behavior be assessed? For example, the native inhabitants of coastal south central California were culturally quite similar, though linguistically diverse; these peoples were missionized some two hundred years ago, and their descendants are now largely or wholly acculturated into contemporary society. What can be said of these peoples’ original speech patterns? The ethnographic statements of actual observers of the indigenous communities largely confined themselves to various aspects of material culture. By the time competent ethnographers arrived on the scene, the culture had already been drastically altered; surviving consultants were themselves largely second hand sources, repeating what they had heard of the old ways.

Nevertheless, the narrative folklore told by such consultants can provide valuable insights into native speech patterns. Myth occasionally supplements other ethnographic sources as a source of sociolinguistic data. Thus, Haas (1944) cites the speech of female characters in Creek myths to show that Creek, like Koasati, once had distinct men’s and women’s forms of speech. Gayton and Newman (1940), discussing the cultural features reflected in Yokuts and Western Mono myths, mention the role of parents-in-law as mediators in domestic quarrels. But narrative folklore — myth, legends, and stories of the more recent past — could be explored much more fully as a source of sociolinguistic data.

Narrative texts show the speech of a wide range of characters in a wide range of social settings. The narrative matrix fixes the forms of speech which characterize these various roles and settings even when they might no longer exist in the consultant’s acculturated world. In a sense, then, the narrative folklore text is a time capsule. Narrative folklore may persist longer than many other features of native culture (e.g., complex social organizations or esoteric rituals and lore). Even if such narratives are no longer alive today in a continuing oral tradition, they are at least likely to have survived long enough to be recorded. Our libraries, in fact, are full of just such collections.

As Melville Jacobs (1959:130) points out in his analysis of Clackamas Chinook myths, many insights into cultural patterns are not likely to be captured either by the ethnographer’s direct observation or by the native’s explicit statements. These are precisely the aspects of culture which the native takes for granted and which the ethnographer (as an outsider) might overlook or fail to understand. So narrative folklore has much to offer the student of a living culture, who can observe and ask questions, and it can prove invaluable in the study of a drastically altered culture.

The analysis of narrative folklore is not without its dangers. The analyst must face the likelihood that this genre may stylize, abbreviate, exaggerate, or otherwise distort various cultural patterns. John Fischer (1963:261–266) discusses this distortion in “The Sociopsychological Analysis of Folktales.” Oral narratives, Fischer says, are selective in their reflection of social life. They are likely to play up areas of social or psychological conflict and instances of exaggerated or extreme behavior. The narrative may combine elements of ideal, actual, and socially disapproved or even fantastic behavior. Distortion may be more serious in certain types of tales or for certain topics, so the clearest picture emerges only from an analysis of as large or as representative a corpus of texts as possible.

As a further caution, Thomas Blackburn’s (1975) cultural analysis of Chumash narratives points out that the distortion discussed by Fischer may include the inversion or reversal of normal standards by supernatural beings. Blackburn suggests that such inversion reinforces the normal standards which apply to the ordinary individual.

What does this possibility of distortion mean when applied to the speech reported in the narrative? We are likely to find speech idealized or stereotyped to meet the expected norms of a given role relationship (e.g., a mother and daughter), rather than reflecting the moods and idiosyncrasies of real people. Reported speech is likely to be somewhat stylized and abbreviated; it may omit utterances which do not directly advance the thread of the story. For example, when we tell a joke in which a conversation appears, the reported conversation is probably shorter and more direct than in real life. A narrative text undoubtedly plays down certain aspects of casual speech, such as jokes and wordplay, hesitation forms, and the kinds of exchanges that serve to assert social solidarity without necessarily conveying much actual information (e.g. small talk).

Fischer (1963:263) claims that folktales seem to be most realistic when the characters represent roles within the nuclear family, so distinctly aberrant figures (e.g., tricksters, monsters, or supernatural beings) are more likely to violate the speech norms. Kroeber (1925: 341) observes this caution in discussing a possible speech taboo between parent-in-law and son- or daughter-in-law among the Yana. Kroeber notes that in one tale Coyote addresses his mother-in-law freely, but given Coyote’s reputation as a trickster it is not safe to assume that this incident disproves a speech taboo.

So even if speech reported in narrative suffers from stylization, abbreviation, distortion, or even violates speech norms, it still provides insight into a society’s speech patterns. In the case of an drastically altered society, careful analysis of recorded narrative folklore could be the basis of a reconstructed ethnography, augmented by any ethnographic records which might exist. Such a reconstructed ethnography could never be as complete or reliable as the ethnography of a living community, however, it still could shed much light on a way of speaking, which we might otherwise know nothing about.

The Chumash Case

When the Franciscan missionaries arrived some two hundred years ago, they found the Chumash Indians of the Santa Barbara region one of the richest and most populous tribes in California, with a complex social organization and high specialization of crafts. Today the descendants of the Chumash recognize themselves as a distinct community, although they preserve relatively few of their old ways. There are no longer any native speakers of any Chumash language.

However, between 1912 and 1922, John Peabody Harrington, a tireless linguist and ethnographer, worked with an older generation of Chumash to record and preserve as much of their language and culture as possible. The result is a vast manuscript collection of linguistic and ethnographic data, including verbatim transcriptions of consultants’ statements plus hundreds of recorded narratives, most of them in Chumash. Thomas Blackburn (1975) mined these narratives for an analysis of material, social, and psychological aspects of Chumash culture.

Much of this material lends itself to sociolinguistic analysis, sometimes directly, more often indirectly. Thus, for example, Harrington himself noted that joking relationships existed between brothers-in-law and between nephew and paternal aunt or maternal uncle (Harrington 1942:31). Sometimes Harrington recorded explicit statements by his consultants, such as the fact that parents might chide a bumbling child by saying “You’re just like siqneks” (a dull-witted boy in myth; cf. Blackburn 1975:text 55). But more often, it is careful examination of the narrative which reveals speech patterns. In exchanges of greetings, for example, the person moving into the territory of a stationary person utters the first greeting if the two are of equal status.

The crucial assumption here is that these Chumash texts faithfully reflect common aboriginal speech patterns, although assuredly they may show speech which is traditionally stylized or somehow exaggerated. Fortunately, the speech reported in these texts does not seem to suffer much stylization — or rather, it is all equally stylized. Myths ought to be more stylized a genre than personal narratives of the more recent past, for example, and while this is true of the purely narrative portions of myths, the speech itself in all of these genres of narrative seems to be stylistically uniform. But a certain degree of stylization would still probably not affect some of the more unconscious patterning of speech, such as a moving person greeting a stationary person first. The texts undoubtedly play down certain aspects of casual speech. For example, jokes and wordplay are almost completely absent in the texts, although both Harrington and his consultants mention a certain amount of verbal play in everyday conversation.

To what extent might speech in these texts reflect an adaptation of European patterns with which Harrington’s consultants were undoubtedly familiar? If the texts were passed on in a very set form, such as Hymes (1966:150) reports for the Wishram, the infiltration of non native elements could safely be regarded as minimal. But Kroeber (1907:320) notes that the Indians of California generally concerned themselves less with the exact form of ritual speech than with its content. Only a few aspects of the Chumash texts are of set form, mostly the opening and closing formulas in mythical texts. This relative freedom reduces the likelihood of stylized speech, but increases the possibility of contamination by European contact. Here the relatively short span between aboriginal times and Harrington’s ethnographic work is important.

The coast was missionized relatively early (1786 at Santa Barbara, 1782 at Ventura), but the Franciscans established a mission in the Santa Ynez Valley as late as 1804. Harrington recorded many of the narrative texts in 1914 from Maria Solares of Santa Ynez, then quite advanced in years. She first heard these stories in childhood, perhaps around 1840 or so, when there were still a few “old Indians” around who had actually participated in native culture before the founding of the mission. Considering how closely the speech patterns revealed in these texts agree with what little is known of neighboring tribes, and how distinct the Chumash patterns are from the European, the possibility of acculturation in these texts seems quite low.

A Sample Text: The Dog-Girl

Here is the text of a tale told in Chumash by Maria Solares in 1914. The purely narrative portions are abbreviated, but the reported speech is translated in full. This text lends itself very well to sociolinguistic analysis.

First, the theme is domestic and the characters represent normal roles within the nuclear family, so that the likelihood of distortion is reduced. Admittedly, the central incident in this myth is bizarre, but otherwise the text is free of fantastic or supernatural beings and characters. The main character is introduced as a dog, but this serves only to explain her poverty, her low status, and her tragic flaw. A Chumash audience would have ascribed both human and animal traits to all of the figures in the text, even if the text does not explicitly identify them with particular animal characters. (For example, members of the chiefly lineage were automatically identified with the eagle in an audience’s mind.)

Second, this text deals with the interaction of different generations and of two extremes of social class, so it depicts a number of possible roles and relationships. Third, dialogue and personal interactions are more fully developed here than in most narratives. Altogether, this text is the Chumash equivalent of a novel of manners.

There was a poor family of dogs with many children; they scavenged bones and refuse to eat. One day, the oldest girl climbed a hill and saw many people on the other side.

“Ah, many people, many people,” she said.

“Come, come!” they called to her, but she didn’t child?” go down.

“Tomorrow I’ll go down there,” she said. She went home and told her mother.

“It was many people that I saw; they were calling to me, but I didn’t go.”

“Why didn’t you go?” her mother said. “They wouldn’t hurt you. You made a mistake; go over there!”

“I’ll go tomorrow,” the girl said.

“Come here so I can comb you,” her mother told her. “You’re going where people are.”

The next day the girl was afraid.

“Take heart,” her mother said, “don’t pity your­self. You will see good people.”

The girl went back; the people saw her and called out: “Quick, quick! Come, come!”

She went down, and they came out to meet her: “Come, come! Have something to eat.”

They took her to the chiefs house and fed her well. In the evening she said: “I should go home.”

“Take cheer. Come again,” they told her.

The girl went home and told her mother: “I will go again tomorrow.”

“Take heart!” her mother said. “I’ll comb you. Come quick so I can comb you!”

The girl went back the next day, and the people called out: “Come, come!”

The chiefs son liked the girl as soon as he saw her. He was in love with her, but he just looked at her without speaking. He said to his mother: “My mother, I like the girl.”

“Fine, I’ll speak to her, my child,” the old woman said.

As soon as the girl came, the old woman called to her: “Come quick to eat something; just eat a little something!”

When the girl had eaten, the old woman said: “My son wants to marry you; he wants you for his wife. What do you say?”

The girl said nothing.

“Speak!” said the old woman.

“Oh, I can’t say. I’ll ask my mother to see what she says.”

“Fine,” said the old woman.

“I’ll go right now and tell my mother.”

“Fine,” said the old woman.

They gave her food to take back to her family.

Her mother said: “How did it go for you, my child?”

“Well, my mother. The chiefs son wants to marry me. What do you say, my mother?”

“What should I say! Good, good! Marry him!”

“I’ll go in the morning; I won’t be back,” the girl said.

“All right,” said her mother.

The girl went back to the village and married the chief’s son. He had a sister whom the girl liked very much.

“Don’t let your wife go hungry,” the chief’s wife told her son.

“All right,” he said.

The girl had all the food and clothes and ornaments she could want. But one day her dog nature asserted itself, and she began to eat excrement. She was seen by her husband’s sister, who went and told the chief’s wife.

“My mother, my sister-in-law was eating filth.”

“Don’t speak of this,” the old woman said. “Your poor brother! Stay here; don’t follow her where she goes!”

The girl overheard this and went away, taking nothing with her.

“I don’t want to bring shame to my husband,” she said.

The chief’s son came and asked his sister: “Where did she go? Call her!”

“I don’t know where she went,” his sister told him.

The chiefs son looked for his wife, without success.

“Maybe you scolded her and she ran away,” his mother said to him.

Meanwhile the girl was far away.

“It’s my own fault. I had everything I wanted, but then why did I have to eat filth?”

Then the girl began to sing to herself:

“If only I had brought my bracelets, my heart would be happy.

If only I had brought my necklace, my heart would be happy.

If only I had brought my earrings, my heart would be happy.

If only I had brought my otter skin apron, my heart would be happy.”

She said, “I have brought shame to my husband; if I go back it will shame my husband. Now I’ll turn into an animal when I get home.”

She arrived at her mother’s house.

“How did it go with you, my child?”

“I had bad luck,” the girl replied. “There was plenty to eat, but I wanted to eat excrement, and my husband’s sister saw me. I don’t ever want to go back again; I left.”

The whole family was disgraced, and they all turned into animals.

Analysis Of The Text

Several aspects of Chumash speech emerge quite clearly in this text. I will point out some of the speech patterns that have parallels in other stories, and I will cite speech patterns illustrated by other texts which will put this text into better perspective.

The girl’s first words, “many people, many people,” illustrate a common pattern in casual speech: the double repetition of one or two word utterances. This pattern is particularly common in exclamations, as when the girl’s mother says, “Good, good! Marry him!” It is equally common in invitations and imperatives intended encouragingly, as when the people call to the girl, “Quick, quick! Come, come!” A command given just once by a superior to a subordinate is more brusque, as when the chiefs wife tells the girl, “Speak!”

The pattern of double repetition in exclamations and imperatives contrasts with a pattern of triple repetition in non casual speech, not represented in this text. Thus, many rituals among the Ventureño Chumash ended with the phrase chaqwin, chaqwin chaqwi’in “that’s all, that’s all, that’s all.” A shaman during a cure might call upon his guardian spirits with the words “Where are you? I need you now!” repeated three times. So a distinction of single, double, and triple repetition helps to mark different levels of speech.

Another difference in level of speech emerges in the use of “filth” versus “excrement” in this text. “Excrement” (waxanish) is the regular term, which probably spanned both the neutral and deprecated levels for the Chumash. This term was used both by the narrator and by the girl herself in reporting her disgrace to her mother. “Filth” (’aximikwash) is a euphemistic substitute, used both by the girl in reproaching herself after she had run away and by her husband’s sister in reporting the incident to the chief’s wife. The girl used the term “filth” immediately after the trauma of discovery and flight; reporting the incident later with a cooler head she used “excrement.” As for the use of “filth” by the chief’s daughter in speaking to her mother, one could conjecture that a high class young woman might not say “excrement” in the presence of her elders. Alternatively, she might have been trying to soften the impact of her shocking report by using the euphemism.

Differences in age and social status influence verbal interaction on several counts. In this text, greater age and superior social status coincide completely, but in other stories, status-marked roles like chief, shaman, or ceremonial official seem to take precedence over age. The elder person need not be much older; in some texts, a difference of a year or two between siblings gives the elder the dominant role, and the elder sibling acts as spokesman in interactions with other parties. Even among adults, the senior member of a group generally acts as spokesman or moderator.

The senior participant tends to speak first: of some fifteen interactions in this text, ten are initiated by the older person. The senior speaker freely questions, commands, rebukes, warns, and advises, all of which the junior accepts without demur. When the senior speaker makes any utterance which does not require a verbal response, the junior typically maintains a respectful silence. For example, the girl evidently complies, but says nothing when her mother tells her, “Come quick so I can comb you.” On the other hand, the senior seldom lets the junior speaker have the last word. If the senior does not add some bit of advice, at least he or she terminates the exchange with some exclamation like “fine,” as the chief s wife does when the girl tells her, “I’ll go right now and tell my mother.”

A junior often seeks the advice of a senior before making a decision. Thus, the girl will not speak for herself when asked if she will marry the chief’s son, but refers the matter to her mother. Similarly, when the chief’s daughter sees the girl eating excrement, she does not confront the girl but goes to her mother with the story. Some of the advice which the characters in these texts deal out so freely concerns speech. Thus, Lizard tells Coyote in one myth (Blackburn 1975: text 21), “When you go to a friend’s home and meet his daughters, always speak to them in words that are straightforward and pure; never use words with double meanings.”

Much of the advice has a reflexive character, ending with some variation of, “If you pay careful attention to my words and follow my advice, then all will go well for you.” Advice from elders was valued and sought out. A chief was praised for his good advice with the words, “He would always help them [his people] with his good advice, and his words were so strong that he always brought about a union between man and woman” (Blackburn 1975:text 24).

Silence is a common verbal strategy in the Chumash texts. Compliance in respectful silence, as pointed out above, is the typical response of a subordinate to a command, suggestion, warning, rebuke, or advice given by a superior. Those in the wrong are typically silent in the face of criticism or reproach. A person might maintain silence even to a direct question if the answer would put him in an untenable position or if the truth would be very distasteful to the questioner. Silence is also stressed in a number of ritual settings, either by observers or by all participants, as an aspect of non-casual speech. The use of silence by the Chumash is similar to that of the Western Apache in Keith Basso’s (1970) analysis.

This text sheds some light on speech between the sexes and speech differences between the sexes, although surely in an exaggerated form. The only male character is the chief’s son, who speaks a little to his mother; he is not shown exchanging a single word with his wife. At one point he even asks his sister to call his wife for him. One consultant said that in the old days men talked and laughed less than women, although men talked louder. The texts which show speech between the sexes generally bear this out.

As the texts also show, the woman was the central figure in the Chumash household; the woman’s place was secure and semi-autonomous. Women were not expected to be particularly submissive in their relations with men; the texts show this to be as true of speech as of other aspects of life. For example, women were expected to speak to male guests and help entertain them. Upper class women were expected to give public speeches at certain ceremonies, and a woman could be chief, necessarily entailing an active speech role. The woman, often the mother, acted as go-between in arranging marriages, as in this text, although a woman might also arrange a marriage on her own behalf. In one story, a man becomes quite jealous when his wife talks to other men at a fiesta, but the aberrant behavior is his inordinate jealousy rather than the woman’s freedom of speech. In this text, in suggesting a possible motive for the girl’s disappearance, the chief’s wife tells her son, “Maybe you scolded her, and she ran away,” evidently a woman whose husband was quarrelsome or scolded her too much could take this verbal misbehavior as grounds for divorce.

As other texts show more clearly, verbal interaction is primarily between speakers of the same sex. Speakers seem to have been more at ease with members of the same sex. In mentioning that the girl liked her husband’s sister very much, the narrator may have been alluding to the intimate relationship — also a joking relationship — which could exist between brothers-in-law or sisters-in-law. This may be why the chief’s son asked his sister, who was almost certain to be his junior, to call his wife for him when he first missed her. But there is no mention of deliberate avoidance of speech with the opposite sex — with the exception of speech avoidance between mother-in-law and son-in-law.

Interaction between speakers of the opposite sex is freest in family relationships between a man and a woman of an older generation: mother and son, aunt and nephew, or grandmother and grandson. The relation between mother and daughter may be highly verbal but often strained, while speech between father and daughter is hardly depicted. Another point of strain is between married adults and their in-laws, particularly between son-in-law and mother-in-law. Verbally, this strain is reflected in some texts by the mother-in-law’s insulting remarks to or about her son-in-law, and by the son-in-law’s avoidance of addressing his mother-in-law directly.

A pattern of verbal indirection is evident in this text, as in others. The speakers do not always come to the point immediately or say just what they mean. The most striking example is when the chief’s son tells his mother, “My mother, I like the girl.” The mother interprets this as meaning “I want to marry her” and she acts accordingly. Of course, it is also possible that the son’s speech is formulaic: maybe no Chumash son ever told his mother that he liked a woman unless he was prepared to marry her. In bringing up the matter with the girl, the chief’s wife first invites her to eat something. In the central incident, the chief’s daughter does not confront the girl directly, but reports to her mother. The chief’s wife orders her daughter not to speak of it, and to silence her son’s questions she offers a conventional rationale for the girl’s disappearance: “Maybe you scolded her, and she ran away.” The girl herself, on returning home, first brings up the subject of her disgrace with the impersonal expression, “I had bad luck.”

Personal names do not appear either as terms of address or reference in this text. Instead, the appropriate kin term is used. Since kin terms belong to the class of inalienably possessed nouns which must always appear with a possessive marker, kin terms in direct address are coupled with “my.” Although there are no examples in the text, non-kin are generally addressed by the term appropriate for kin of the same relative age and sex: e.g., “uncle” to an older man, “grandfather” to a man much older. Avoiding even the use of kin terms in address, the Chumash often resorted to hand-clapping or touching as an attention-getting device.

While personal names are absent in casual speech, they are quite evident in non-casual .speech. Personal names occur in curses and the utterances of malevolent sorcerers in other narratives. In one story, using a small model of his victim, a shaman invokes a spell on a man named winay with the words, “This doll is winay.” Not only are these instances of word magic the best examples of non-casual speech, the fear of just such negative word magic is also the motive force behind the whole practice of name avoidance. Frazer (1935) points out that such name taboos are nearly universal among preliterate peoples. Personal names occur in less dramatic instances of non-casual speech as well, mostly ceremonial. One such occasion was the distribution of gifts to the mourners at a funeral, in which the speaker addressed each mourner by name while giving him or her some token: “silinahuwit, you have your share.”

Under most circumstances, the avoidance of personal names was part of decorous, mannerly speech. A violation of the norms of proper speech could be signaled and intensified by a deliberate use of the addressee’s name as an insult. In one myth (Blackburn 1975: text 36), Coyote appeals for food to a group of children digging bulbs. One of the generous children responds: “Poor grandfather, since you are skinny eat the bulbs I’ve dug so far.” The stingy children then say: “Coyote, what I’ve dug so far is for my relatives only.” Here the sin of stinginess is compounded with the verbal sins of address by personal name and direct refusal of an elder’s request.

The speech of Coyote deserves special mention. Coyote is simultaneously a trickster, a magician, and a culture hero of sorts; he is sometimes a lone adventurer, and sometimes he appears in the settled role of father, husband, nephew, or son-in-law. Both his speech and his general behavior alternate between conformity to Chumash norms and flagrant violation of them. In violation of speech norms, Coyote may directly address his friends by name, he may speak directly or even insultingly to his mother-in-law, address elders as “old man” and “old woman” rather than as “grandfather” and grandmother,” and brazenly ask a host for food before being invited. Needless to say, these breaches of etiquette are not necessarily obvious out of context (What contemporary reader would be shocked to hear someone address a friend by name?); their abnormal status is apparent only against the background of the entire corpus of reported speech.

This text also hints at the importance of song to the Chumash. Having fled in disgrace, and then realizing how complete her loss is, the girl first reproaches herself and then breaks into an extemporaneous song lamenting her plight. For the girl, this moment is perhaps the emotional high-point of the story, although her song is merely a catalogue of the paraphernalia she left behind. In many other myths and stories, characters extemporize songs, generally short and repetitive. Sometimes these songs are merely expressive, as in this case, but they may have some end in view: they may attract another character’s attention, act as a taunt or reassurance, or magically effect some desired end. Songs may be given by an individual’s guardian spirit in a vision, and subsequent use of the song evokes the guardian or its powers. In any case, songs are clearly in the realm of non-casual speech.

Composed songs cover a much more complex range of genres and functions, although no more outstanding ethnographically than among neighboring groups. Many characters have songs which serve to identify them; for example, a supernatural creature called yowoyow, who throws his victims into a basket of boiling tar, goes around singing, “yowoyow he, my basket is boiling, yowoyow.” It is possible that in a sequel to the present text we might find the girl in later life still singing her song lamenting the loss of her bracelets and her otter-skin apron.

On the basis of these texts, it is possible to say something about Chumash attitudes toward language. The Chumash did not regard language as unique to man in the same sense that western man does. Thus, just as a man might have his own song which identified him and gave him power, the call of birds and animals was their song: for example, the squirrel, called pistuk, sang “pisluku tuku pistuku tuku.” Even in the narratives of historical times, as well as in the old mythical texts, the Chumash world was animated with plants and animals, spirits and supernatural beings, even physical objects and natural forces, all potential participants in the speech act. A message from one of these entities was carefully heeded, and speech addressed to any of them was likely to be direct, serious, and prayerful.

In the sphere of human activities, the texts uniformly show a concern for serious, proper, moderate speech. We could expect this from the mythical texts, since one of their functions in portraying cultural norms and ideals was undoubtedly didactic, but it is equally true of the later, more personal narratives. Jokes and wordplay are almost completely absent. Negative speech forms like lies, boasts, insults, slights, belittling good advice, revealing secrets, and even excessively loud speech, are typically shown as leading to misfortune. Proper speech, including the giving of advice, conduces to harmonious relationships both with society and with the larger whole.

Conclusion

The observations above take one mythical text as a representative sample of aboriginal Chumash speech, although reference to many other narrative texts is necessary to put this sample into some perspective. These remark merely sketch a few of the major patterns of verbal interaction. A great deal more could be said in organizing the data for an exhaustive and full-scale speech ethnography. This glimpse into the Chumash way of speaking is far richer and more intimate than anything we might have had by relying solely on the observations of early ethnographers or the explicit statements of consultants.

These generalizations about Chumash speech require a larger background. From what is known of neighboring groups, it seems that many of the speech patterns appearing among the Chumash had a much wider distribution, such as silence as a common verbal strategy, name avoidance in direct address, or deference toward senior speakers, who exercised the right to give advice in plenty. Triple repetition in non-casual speech occurs in neighboring tribes in south-central and southern California. But some of these patterns, like the deliberate use of personal names in insults, may be Chumash innovations. Other widespread speech patterns might show a special adaptation among the Chumash in response to a particular Chumash social or cultural need. A good deal of this analysis is based on noncasual speech reported in narratives. A parallel worth noting is that the neighboring Yokuts also stressed conversation in their myths (cf. Gayton and Newman 1940). Perhaps this particular metalinguistic concern was part of the south-central California culture area as a whole. Only comparison with neighboring groups will show which features of the speech ethnography sketched above are unique to the Chumash and which are common to south-central California as a culture area, or even common to all of California and beyond.

California State University — San Jose — 1975