Esquisse de typologie des noms d'affect à partir de leurs propriétés combinatoires

Abstract

This study attempts to outline a typology of “affect nouns” according to their semantic and syntactic features. We have worked from the assumption that semantic dimensions can be highlighted through a lexical-syntactic combination. After taking stock of the linguistic contexts for the 40 most frequent French affect nouns in a corpus analysis (using the Frantext database), we have considered a set of dimensions in the light of the cooccurrences: actantial structure, aspect (punctual vs. durative, phases), external physical manifestation, affect control, causation, verbalisation. Thanks to the combinatorial method, it has been possible to distinguish six classes of affect nouns, primarily based on the actantial structure, the punctual vs. durative and the control features, and secondarily on external manifestation and verbalisation. While some characteristics, such as causation and phases, have shown little discriminative power, other semantic parameters – polarity, intensity, the axiological dimension – that we had assumed to be irrelevant, have finally proved to be essential.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 150 citations exist upstream.