FEELINGS (Abstract Notions) + JOHN

[shokooh Ingham]

True abstract notions are difficult to sort out.  In Lakota I note that I have a word woableze 'perception' and would think that ableza 'to perceive, understand' could stand for 'feel' as well'.  The word slolya 'know, experience' also comes near to it as in teh^i slolya 'experience difficulties, have a hard time'.  Often as you note there is a specific word for things like 'feel sad', feel happy' sometimes involving chante 'heart' obviously in Lakota the seat of emotions.  So one finds chante s^ica 'feel sad', chante was^te 'feel happy'.  The word thawacin is also often translated 'feelings, emotions' though I can't think how it could be used in a sentence.  I would love to know what other Lakotanists think might stand for 'feel, feelings'.
Bruce

BARudes at aol.com wrote:      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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