A Cross-linguistic Study into the Contribution of Affective Connotation in the Lexico-semantic Representation of Concrete and Abstract Concepts (original) (raw)
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Affective meaning is pervasive in language. In this chapter we discuss its presence at multiple levels of linguistic analysis, with special attention to the lexicon. In a first introduction to the phenomenon, we explain and illustrate two types of affective meaning (denotative and connotative) and three ways to account for it (categorical, dimensional and feature-based approaches) transversal to all levels of analysis. We then illustrate how affect is communicated in phonology, morphology, the lexicon, and syntax, with examples from different languages. The discussion of the lexicon is further organized around two variables: (a) the word's grammatical class, where we discuss emotion concepts such as nouns (e.g., joy), verbs (e.g., to embarrass), adjectives (e.g., sad) and adverbs (e.g., surprisingly); and (b) the word's figurativeness, where we analyze affective meaning in literal (e.g. to rage) and figurative expressions (e.g., to erupt) and discuss the privileged link between figurative language and emotion.
A Context-sensitive, Multi-faceted model of Lexico-Conceptual Affect
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Affective and Non-affective Meaning in Words and Pictures
When people see a snake, they are likely to activate both affective information (e.g., dangerous) and non-affective information (e.g., animal). According to the Affective Primacy Hypothesis, the affective information has priority, and its activation can precede identification of the ontological category of a stimulus. Alternatively, according to the Cognitive Primacy Hypothesis, perceivers must know what they are looking at before they can make an affective judgment about it. We propose that neither hypothesis holds at all times. In two experiments, we show that the relative speed with which affective and non-affective information gets activated by words and pictures depends upon the contexts in which the stimuli are processed. These data support a view according to which words and pictures do not "have" meanings; rather, they are cues to activate patterns of stored knowledge, the specifics of which are co-determined by the item itself and the context in which it occurs.
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The idea that abstract words are grounded in our sensorimotor experience is gaining support and popularity, as observed in the increasing number of studies dealing with "neurosemantics." Therefore, it is important to form models that explain how to bridge the gap between basic bodily experiences and abstract language. This paper focuses on the embodiment of connotations, such as 'sweet' in 'sweet baby', where the adjective has been abstracted from its concrete and embodied sense. We summarize several findings from recent studies in neuroscience and the cognitive sciences suggesting that emotion, body, and language are three factors required for understanding the emergence of abstract words, and (1) propose a model explaining how these factors contribute to the emergence of connotations, (2) formulate a computational model instantiating our theoretical model and (3) test our model in a task involving the automatic identification of connotations. The results support our model pointing to the role of embodiment in the formation of connotations.
The inference of affective meanings: an experimental study
DANIELA ROSSI, MARC DOMINICY and RÉGINE KOLINSKY. The inference of affective meanings: an experimental study. Language and Cognition, available on CJO2014. doi:10.1017/langcog.2014.33.
Communicating information about our affective states is an important aspect of utterance meaning. Affective meanings can be expressed either explicitly or in an implicit way, for example by using particular linguistic structures like Creative Total Reduplication (CTR), the intentional and immediate repetition of a word (“It’s a little little cat”). We claim that, in addition to its explicit meaning (“very little”), CTR conveys an affective meaning reflecting the speaker’s evaluation of the world as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant (“It’s a cute little cat”). The experiment reported here used a verification task with judgments of consistency. It aimed at verifying two hypotheses: first, the presence of CTR generates valued affective inferences; second, affective inferences are generated faster with CTR than with the simplex (i.e. non-reduplicated) form. Results strongly confirm the first hypothesis and disconfirm the second.
The representation of abstract words: why emotion matters
Journal of experimental psychology. General, 2011
Although much is known about the representation and processing of concrete concepts, knowledge of what abstract semantics might be is severely limited. In this article we first address the adequacy of the 2 dominant accounts (dual coding theory and the context availability model) put forward in order to explain representation and processing differences between concrete and abstract words. We find that neither proposal can account for experimental findings and that this is, at least partly, because abstract words are considered to be unrelated to experiential information in both of these accounts. We then address a particular type of experiential information, emotional content, and demonstrate that it plays a crucial role in the processing and representation of abstract concepts: Statistically, abstract words are more emotionally valenced than are concrete words, and this accounts for a residual latency advantage for abstract words, when variables such as imageability (a construct de...
Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure
Science, 2019
The diverse way that languages convey emotion It is unclear whether emotion terms have the same meaning across cultures. Jackson et al. examined nearly 2500 languages to determine the degree of similarity in linguistic networks of 24 emotion terms across cultures (see the Perspective by Majid). There were low levels of similarity, and thus high variability, in the meaning of emotion terms across cultures. Similarity of emotion terms could be predicted on the basis of the geographic proximity of the languages they originate from, their hedonic valence, and the physiological arousal they evoke. Science , this issue p. 1517 ; see also p. 1444
Cross-Cultural and Gender Comparison of Emotional Connotation of Words
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So far, scientists have researched to explore the emotional connotation of words in different native languages and genders. This study investigates how connotations of words differ by cultures and genders by inspecting valence values, which indicates how happy people feel about specific words in datasets obtained from USA, Spain, and Portuguese. To fulfill the objective, we categorized people’s feelings evoked by the words based on a criterion created by adding or subtracting standard deviation to or from valence means for the upper and lower bound. Then, words with valence values outside of the upper and lower bounds were categorized as emotional words (positive or negative) and were analyzed. The results show that people of different cultures are more connected regarding the perception of negative connotation of words than positive connotation. Moreover, Portuguese and Spanish are more connected than either of them with the US as they have more emotion words in common. On the gend...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2011
■ According to embodied theories, the symbols used by language are meaningful because they are grounded in perception, action, and emotion. In contrast, according to abstract symbol theories, meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal symbols. If language is grounded in internal bodily states, then one would predict that emotion affects language. Consistent with this, advocates of embodied theories propose a strong link between emotion and language [Havas, D., Glenberg, A. M., & Rinck, M. Emotion simulation during language comprehension. ]. The goal of this study was to test abstract symbol vs. embodied views of language by investigating whether mood affects semantic processing. To this aim, we induced different emotional states (happy vs. sad) by present-ing film clips that displayed fragments from a happy movie or a sad movie. The clips were presented before and during blocks of sentences in which the cloze probability of mid-sentence critical words varied (high vs. low). Participants read sentences while ERPs were recorded. The mood induction procedure was successful: Participants watching the happy film clips scored higher on a mood scale than those watching the sad clips. For N400, mood by cloze probability interactions was obtained. The N400 cloze effect was strongly reduced in the sad mood compared with the happy mood condition. Furthermore, a difference in late positivity was only present for the sad mood condition. The mood by semantic processing interaction observed for N400 supports embodied theories of meaning and challenges abstract symbol theories that assume that processing of word meaning reflects a modular process. ■ action (movement, proprioception), and emotion . In line with this, classical theories of meaning are abstract symbol , 1975). According to these theories, meaning arises from the syntactic combination of abstract, amodal (nonperceptual) symbols that are arbitrarily related to entities in the real world. For example, according to one of the most frequently cited theories of , meaning arises from the pattern of relations among nodes in a network. Every node in the network corresponds to an undefined word, and the set of nodes to which a particular node is connected corresponds to the words in the dictionary definition. The conceptual network is organized according to semantic similarity and represents facts about concepts. For instance, for the concept lion, it represents facts such as lions are large, lions live in Africa, lions are feline, lions have a mane, and so forth. This conception gave rise to different types of representation, such as feature lists, schemata, semantic nets, and connectionism. Mathematical highdimensional models of meaning (e.g., latent semantic analysis [LSA] of Landauer & Dumais, 1997) have been presented as a new variant of the classical abstract symbol theories.