Emotions in Oneida

Abstract

Oneida has terms for emotions, as well as other mental activities, that include one of three noun roots referring to the mind: ‘mind, thought, spirit’, ‘mind, thought’, and ‘soul’. There are no constructions in Oneida that describe emotions by referring to body organs, other than the mind, or characteristic bodily “symptoms”, although some emotive interjections include the terms for ‘crack in the behind, anus’ or ‘feces, excrement’. Oneida speakers attribute their classification of diverse concepts as emotions to the idea that all feelings reside in the mind. However, the issue of whether Oneida has an exponent for a semantic primitive feel is controversial.