FEELINGS (Abstract Notions) + JOHN

[Blair Rudes]

In a message dated 11/29/2007 12:23:07 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,  
goodtracks at peoplepc.com writes:

First, the word is that John is well and attending to  every day life stuff 
as we all do.
 
Second, I got to thinking about the word  "Feelings".  In IOM, there are 
words for "feel" as in touch; there are  also words, often adjectives that can be 
rendered as intransitive (stative)  verbs, i.e., feel ... (good, bad, sick, 
helpless, angry, relieved,  ignored).  I have "hurt someone's feelings" and 
"feel  like...(whatever...sleep, standing, speaking).
But a word for the genre, I find nothing.  I  looked up cognate languages for 
"feelings" and what little I found, tend to  give results similar to what I 
have in IOM.  I looked in Johannes'  Hochank, Carolyn's Osage, Mark's Omaha, 
Buechel's Lakota and Williamson's  Dakota.  Noone seems to take up the subject 
of Abstract  Notions.
 
Maybe it is not worthy of discussion, or not a  legitimate concern.
 
I dont recall that the list has had discussions on  abstract notions.  Unlike 
the nouns of material stubstance, they tend to  be a bit elusive.  But they 
are indispensible to mature conversation in  any language.
Jimm
 
 



 
Jimm, 
Abstract notions are absolutely a  legitimate concern and an all to often 
overlooked one. One difficulty is that  discovering the terms for abstract 
notions for a non-native speaker often  requires abandoning preconceived notions of 
what those terms should  be. 
In English and the languages of  other Indo-European cultures, there is a 
metaphoric association of emotions with  physical sensations. Thus, the use of 
the term “feelings” for emotions. In other  cultures, emotions are associated 
with non-physical phenomena of cognition. For  example in the Tuscarora 
language (and other Northern Iroquoian languages),  emotions belong to the “class” 
of phenomena that are “classified” by the  abstract noun root -?tikeNhr- ‘mind’
 (-?nikuhr- in Mohawk,  -?nikuhl- in Oneida, -?nikoNhR- in Seneca, Cayuga, 
and  Mohawk). If you look at any dictionary of an Iroquoian language, you will 
find  that terms incorporating the noun root for ‘mind’ refer to thinking, 
believing,  and (emotional) feeling. In addition, the verb stems that incorporate 
the noun  root for ‘mind’ also include “states-of-being” that would be 
considered in  Western culture to be physical conditions. As one example, I once 
asked Marjorie  (Marge) Printup – a fluent speaker of Tuscarora who has since 
passed away – how  to translate the expression “drug-free” into Tuscarora. She 
responded with the  word ka?tikeNhran`ureN?, which literally means “a 
precious mind”.   
I have not specifically looked at  the Catawba data for such abstract 
notions, but nothing comes to mind. But of  course the data on Catawba are very 
limited, not only in quantity but in what  the researchers thought to ask about.  
If I run across any relevant information, I will post it on the  list. 
Blair



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