Programm 79. StuTS

Emotions and feelings play an important role in human life. But do we feel differently? How does the division of semantic space vary? Are there cross-linguistic patterns in this division? In my Bachelor’s thesis, I aimed to address these questions from a syntactic perspective by comparing the constructions used to express emotions and feelings in languages around the globe.

For this investigation, I established a sample of twelve languages from different language families, selecting two languages from each macro-area. A set of twelve emotions and feelings—collectively referred to as psych verbs—was defined, aiming to capture the most “basic” ones based on their attestation in the data. Within each language, psych verbs that were co-expressed by the same syntactic construction were grouped together. On the basis of these groupings, a semantic map was constructed, representing the connections between these elements in semantic space.

To assess the uncertainty of these connections, a bootstrapping algorithm was applied. However, as the resulting semantic map was relatively dense, the bootstrapping procedure yielded only limited additional insights, since the number of connections remained largely unchanged across samples. In this talk, I will discuss the results of this investigation and outline possible directions for future research.

Info

Tag: 16.05.2026
Anfangszeit: 11:00
Dauer: 00:30
Raum: DOR 24 1.401
Track: Typology
Sprache: en

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