Emotion semantics show both cultural variation and universal structure

Abstract

Many human languages have words for emotions such as “anger” and “fear,” yet it is not clear whether these emotions have similar meanings across languages, or why their meanings might vary. We estimate emotion semantics across a sample of 2474 spoken languages using “colexification”—a phenomenon in which languages name semantically related concepts with the same word. Analyses show significant variation in networks of emotion concept colexification, which is predicted by the geographic proximity of language families. We also find evidence of universal structure in emotion colexification networks, with all families differentiating emotions primarily on the basis of hedonic valence and physiological activation. Our findings contribute to debates about universality and diversity in how humans understand and experience emotion.

Idiosyncratic Tower of Babel: Individual differences in word meaning representation increase along abstractness

“…We often assume that differences in thoughts are reflected by different choices of words, and that speakers of the same language have common conceptual understandings about the basic elements of word meaning. Such commonality is the basis of effective learning and communication when speaking the same language and word meaning misalignment is usually only discussed within the context of cross-language speakers 1,2 . However, there are also intriguing individual variations in how we understand a word within a language, which associate with important nonverbal properties, such as political position 3 or emotional perception 4 .…”

Biologie versus Kultur, Sprache und Denken – am Beispiel von Farben und Emotionen

“…On the other hand, if language group A colexifies "drink" with "lake" and "river" but language group B colexifies "drink" with "sweet," "fruit," and "sugar" as well as "lake" and "river," this would suggest that language group A defines "drink" primarily as water-based whereas language group B defines "drink" as inclusive of a set of concepts involving fruit juice as well as water. Comparing networks of colexification requires some assumed equivalence in concept identity ("drink") across language families, but varying colexification patterns can illustrate how these concepts can have different meanings across the world's spoken languages" [10].…”

“…3 Beispiel der Entstehung eines Kolexifikations-Netzwerks der allgemeinen pflanzenbezogenen Begriffe "Wald", "Baum", "Holz", "Stamm", "Ast" und "Wurzel". Und genau das taten die Autoren einer internationalen Arbeitsgruppe [10], denn sie wendeten die Methode der Analyse von Polysemie über die Kolexifikation in Sprachfamilien auf menschliche Emotionen an. An-9 "The methods developed here can be applied to any semantic domain to reveal the extent to which its conceptual structure is, similarly, a universal attribute of human cognition and language use".…”

“…Sprachen. "Wenn man analysiert, wie die Leute Wörter benutzen, kann das zeigen, ob die Leute Emotionen ähnlich oder unterschiedlich erfahren", beschreiben die Autoren ihr Vorgehen" 10 In den 2474 Sprachen identifizierten sie 2439 Begriffe, von denen 24 Emotionen benennen, die besonders unter die Lupe genommen wurden. Statistisch wurden dann für alle Sprachen Kolexifikations-Netzwerke erstellt.…”

“…B. sichergestellt sein, dass Begriffe wie "like" ("mögen") nicht mit dem Begriff "like" (im Sinne von "ist ähnlich") in einen Topf geworfen werden. Auch die Frage nach der 11 "For example, Youn and colleagues conducted one particularly insightful analysis in which they showed that 22 Swadesh list concepts-which are theorized to be universally expressed and understood-had similar colexification patterns around the world based on the structure of colexification communities" [10]. "[…] languages were more likely to colexify concepts such as "water" and "sea," than concepts such as "sun" and "water," implying that speakers of these languages viewed "water" and "sea" as semantically similar concepts and "sun" and "water" as distinct.…”