FEELINGS (Abstract Notions) + JOHN
Blair Rudes
BARudes at aol.com
Fri Nov 30 02:47:05 UTC 2007
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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