Volitionality and passing gas

In Sherpa, like in other Tibetic languages, a distinction is made between volitional and non-volitional verbs, meaning that when you describe an action in Sherpa you usually need to specify if it is either 'on purpose', or accidental. In English this distinction is sometimes made lexically with verbs of perception, as in the difference between 'seeing' and 'looking' (or 'watching') as well as 'hearing' and 'listening'. However, in Tibetic languages, this distinction extends to most other verbs as well.

While there are some interesting pairs, my favourite one so far from the Sherpa-English dictionary is:

སླེན་ཤོར་ pen shor (v.inv) = to fart (involuntarily)
སྤེན་གཏོང་ pen tong (v.vol) = to fart

How volitionally can one fart?

Comments

  1. Hilario de Sousa2 November 2010 at 06:16

    mmm... some people can fart on cue. Or some people can hold it, so that the fart only happens at the desired time/place.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Amos2 November 2010 at 09:34

    I'm not so sure about the farting on cue. I can sort of belch / semi-belch on cue. The holding it in and releasing is what I would consider more volitional, though the whole process of gas build-up in my mind is just not that volitional.

    Though it could be similar to the distinction between breathing vs. gulping air.

    ReplyDelete

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