The annotated lexicon of chinese emotion words

Abstract

This study explores language specificity in the organization and distribution of emotion words in Mandarin Chinese. Anecdotal references to the prevalence of use of verbs in some languages (e.g. Russian and Mandarin) for expressing emotion words compared to English has not been supported by empirical evidence from a comprehensive study of the emotion words vocabulary, and, despite a proliferation of cross-linguistic studies of emotion words, a database of a corpus of emotion words across languages is absent. Emotion words in Mandarin Chinese were extracted, sorted into three semantic categories; emotion words, emotion-laden words and emotion-related words, and tagged for frequency of use, valency, intensity and parts of speech. Corpus data analysis method was then employed to study the patterns of the data. Consistent with other reports on Mandarin Chinese in other domains (e.g. acquisition), it was found that verbs occupied the biggest percentage in both emotion words and emotion-related words categories. An analysis of the valence and intensity of emotion words shows cross-linguistic divergence from what other studies have reported. The study also represents a significant attempt at providing a working template for the identification of emotion words in emotion research.

Keywords:

• emotions
• emotion-laden words
• emotion-related words
• Mandarin Chinese
• valence

Acknowledgements

We thank Liu Hong Yong (Post doctoral Fellow), Teh Hui Chian (Project officer) and April Ching (Project Officer) who all assisted with coordinating the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Bee Chin Ng http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9189-5898

Francesco Cavallaro http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9376-0513

Notes

1. Antecedent Events are situations or events that evoke emotions.

Appraisal refers to the evaluation that links perception of an event to emotional meaning.

Significance is the evaluation of the experience in relation to oneself.

Regulation refers to the inhibition or enhancement of emotions.

Arousal refers to the physiological responses to emotions.

Experience refers to the awareness of some or all components.

Action readiness is how individuals act to modify or entertain some form of relationship with the environment.

Additional information

Funding

We wish to acknowledge the funding support for this project from Nanyang Technological University under the Undergraduate Research Experience on CAmpus (URECA) programme. We are also grateful to the Nanyang Technological University New Silk Road Grant (NSR M4080398.100) for supporting the Research Assistants used in this project.