Tag: (E) disgusting

(2014) English – Emotions / Interjections

Goddard, Cliff (2014). On “disgust”. In Fabienne Baider, & Georgeta Cislaru (Eds.), Linguistic approaches to emotions in context (pp. 73-97). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOI: 10.1075/pbns.241.06god

Abstract:

This study relies on the NSM approach to explore conceptualisations of “disgust” in English via semantic analysis of descriptive adjectives (disgusted and disgusting) and interjections (Ugh! and Yuck!). As well as drawing out some subtle meaning differences between these expressions, the exercise establishes that there is no one-to-one mapping between the meanings of descriptive emotion lexemes, on the one hand, and expressive interjections, on the other.

More broadly, the study seeks to advance the semantic study of “disgust-like” concepts in a cross-linguistic perspective, first, by highlighting aspects of meaning that differ between the English expressions and their near-equivalents in other languages, such as German, French and Polish, and second, by proposing a set of touchstone semantic components that can help facilitate cross-linguistic investigation.

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Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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(2016) English – Evaluational adjectives

Goddard, Cliff, Taboada, Maite, & Trnavac, Radoslava (2016). Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis (Technical report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1). Vancouver: Simon Fraser University, School of Computing Science. PDF (open access)

This technical report applies the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to the lexical-semantic analysis of English evaluational adjectives and compares the results with the picture developed in Martin & White’s Appraisal Framework. The analysis is corpus-assisted, with examples mainly drawn from film and book reviews, and supported by collocational and statistical information from WordBanks Online. NSM explications are proposed for 24 evaluational adjectives, and it is argued that they fall into five groups, each of which corresponds to a distinct semantic template. The groups can be sketched as follows: “First-person thought-plus-affect”, e.g. wonderful; “Experiential”, e.g. entertaining; “Experiential with bodily reaction”, e.g. gripping; “Lasting impact”, e.g. memorable; “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent. These groupings and semantic templates are compared with the classifications in the Appraisal Framework’s system of Appreciation. The report concludes with discussion of the relevance of the two frameworks for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications.


Research carried out by one or more experienced NSM practitioners

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