Proceedings of The 7th International Conference on Social Sciences in the 21st Century
Year: 2023
DOI:
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The Semantic Syntax of Emotions in English: Of, With, and For
Chloe McMillan
ABSTRACT:
This paper identifies relationships between syntactic structures and the meanings of emotion words. 24 adjectives and participles (afraid, scared, ashamed, proud, tired, guilty, happy, comfortable, delighted, pleased, angry, furious, irritated, annoyed, relieved, thankful, grateful, hopeful, happy, anxious, embarrassed, worried, pitied, and consoled) are examined in their relationships to three prepositions: of, with, and for. Using Python to look at the frequencies of each preposition following each emotion word, I identify semantic features, or conceptual structures, associated with each group of emotion words as correlated with their selection of prepositional syntactic complements and discuss whether or not these structures are metaphorical and support the theoretical claims of cognitive semanticists regarding the embodiment of abstract meaning.
keywords: semantics, syntax, lexical, cognitive, emotions, feelings, prepositions, adjectives, participles, thematic roles, metaphors, English