Inquiry -

[Linda Cumberland]

Hi Christine,

You have probably heard from some of my Siouanist colleagues - I'd bet
money that John Koontz has responded with tons of data.  What he/they
are not likely to have is Assiniboine data - that being the language
for which I am currently writing a grammar.

Assiniboine is one member of the so-called Sioux-Assiniboine-Stoney
dialect continuum (cf. Parks, Douglas and Raymond DeMallie, 1992
Athropological Linguistics (34) 233-55).  "Sioux" consists basically
of the Lakota/Dakota languages; Assiniboine is closely related but
mutually unintelligible.  Assiniboine is spoken in northern Montana
and in Saskatchewan, and there are fewer than 100 speakers left.  So
much for context.

Here are the terms you asked for, where a tilda following a vowel
indicates that the vowel is nasalized and a ' following a syllable
indicates that the syllable is stressed:

i~de'shayena iya'ya    1) to blush   2) face to become red as when
working under a hot sun

[i~de' "face", sha' "red", -yena "in that manner", iya'ya literally
"to set out to go somewhere" but in this case, an inchoative auxiliary
verb meaning "to become (involuntary)"]

Two things about this are pertinent with regard to your question.  The
physical manifestation is not distinguised for cause of facial
redness, even though the blush disappears quickly and the sun-induced
redness endures longer.  Also, there is a distinction made between red
from the sun and a sunburn (mashti~'shpa~ literally 'hot-sunny-day
burned').

A further point to be made is that in situations where there is
embarrassment, the situation is more likely to be indicated by some
other behavior, such as a nervous giggle.  For example, there is a
story in which a young man and a young woman whose relationship is one
of avoidance accidentally find themselves together.  The young man
responds by trying to push the woman away, and the young woman
responds by drawing back and giggling nervously.  There is no mention
of blushing.  The situation is resolved when the young man's brothers
decide to adopt the young woman as a daughter, allowing her to remain
in the household and interact with all the brothers in the respect
relationship prescribed for fathers and daughters. (The story is
called "Splinter Girl" recorded at Ft. Belknap Reservation, Montana in
the 1980s.  The narrator is Isabelle Wing. It is in a collection
called "Nakoda Reader" copyrighted by the American Indian Studies
Research Institute, Bloomington 2003.)

Incidentally, my sister, who is an English professor, gave a
conference paper a number of years back on the use of the blush as a
literary device.  If you think this would be interesting/helpful, let
me know and I will ask her if she could send the paper to you as an
attachment.

Hope this helps.  Good luck on your thesis - I'm having a heck of a
time with mine!

Linda Cumberland
PhD Candidate
American Indian Studies Research Institute
Indiana University
Bloomington, IN
-------------------
>
>
> Hello!
>
>         My name is Christine Murphy; I am currently a senior in
Columbia
> University's Anthropology department, and would like to ask if I may
draw
> on the experience and resources of those on this listserv to help
inform
> my senior thesis.
>
>         I am looking into the cross-cultural significance of the
> physiological and emotional responses associated with blushing, and
their
> implications for nonverbal communication.   I wonder if anyone out
> there has encountered related terms in his/her studies of Siouan
languages
> (for the internal response, if not for an outward physical sign:
verb,
> noun, or adjective).
>
>         The scope of such terms might include (but is certainly not
> limited to) associations with the physical manifestations of
> embarrassment, shame, anger, sexual attraction, or modesty, my
particular
> interest being evidence of perceivable facial difference, perhaps by
a
> change in skin appearance (as is indicated in the English verb "to
> blush"). Here at Columbia I unfortunately do not have ready print
> resources for Siouan languages - but more importantly, the
experience as
> researchers and perhaps speakers of these language that you all may
> offer me is a far greater opportunity, to be sure that the
> terms and uses I refer to in my paper are current, salient, not
relics of
> linguists overeager to find one-to-one relationships between
familiar and
> foreign language systems.
>
>
> Many thanks, and best wishes for the coming spring -
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Christine Murphy
>
>
>