Composition of negative emotions' naming in the Russian language

Kukushkina Ol'ga Vladimirovna Doctor of Philology Doctor of Philology, Professor of the Russian Language Department of the Faculty of Philology Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov 117574, Russia, Moscow, Yasenevo district, Golubinskaya str., 7, room 2, sq. 379 ovkukush@mail.ru

Sun' Jialin Postgraduate student of the Department of Russian Language, Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University 108802, Russia, Moscow, Kommunarka district, Novomoskovsky district, Maloe Ponizovye str., 4, sq. 262 1094106440@qq.com

As you know, the comparative analysis conducted by A. Vezhbitskaya allowed her to speak about a higher "emotional temperature" Russian Russian text in comparison with some other languages ^{[3, p. 55]}, and also to conclude that the Russian language, in comparison with "Western languages" "acts as a language that pays much more attention to emotions and has a much richer repertoire of lexical and grammatical expressions to distinguish them" ^{[3, p. 44]}. She saw this as a manifestation of an important semantic and psychological law ^{[3, p. 49]}, which R.V. Brown and M. Ford formulated as follows: "in language collectives, the degree of lexical differentiation within a certain semantic field increases with the increasing importance of this field for this collective" ^{[10, p. 238][1]}.

Russian Russian speakers can assume that the degree of lexical differentiation of emotions in the Russian literary language will be very high due to the high importance of emotions. To verify this and get a reliable basis for comparison, you need to have an initial list of Russian names of emotions. Such a list is also useful in many other ways, for example, in the field of RCT, as well as in the automatic analysis of Russian texts. However, when compiling it, problems arise that require special discussion. The main ones are discussed below.

Russian Russian lexicography pays a lot of attention to the description of emotive vocabulary, therefore, to solve this problem, it is natural to turn to Russian semantic dictionaries. These are primarily the "Russian Semantic Dictionary" edited by N.Yu. Shvedova ^[7] and dictionaries created by L.G. Babenko and under her guidance – see Russian Russian Dictionary is an appendix to the work "Lexical means of labeling emotions in the Russian language" ^[1], "Thesaurus dictionary of synonyms of Russian speech" ^[8] and "Alphabet of emotions" ^[2]. Russians Russian Semantic Dictionary and the Thesaurus of Synonyms have special sections that describe the basic composition of Russian words with emotive semantics, and the Appendix and the Alphabet of Emotions are entirely devoted to the description of such lexical units and their semantic grouping. However, an analysis of these descriptions has shown (see ^[9]) that there is no explicit division into negative and positive emotions in them, and the names of emotions are not separated from emotive means of a different type, i.e. expressing different types of emotions, but not naming them. In this regard, there is a need for additional analysis of the available material and sampling of the appropriate type of units from it.

To identify the range of names of negative emotions, you first need to determine what will be understood by ‘negativity’. The composition of the generated list directly depends on this. In a broad sense, it will need to include both the names of emotions that make the subject suffer, experience negative feelings (cf. resentment), and the names of emotions negatively evaluated by their object, which causes suffering to him, and not to the subject (cf. contempt). It seems that it is important to distinguish between “negatively experienced” and “negatively evaluated" emotions. In the case of contempt, the actual negative emotion (suffering, unpleasant experience) is experienced by the one who is despised, i.e. the object of the feeling, the relationship. For the subject, this emotion can bring satisfaction or even joy. Thus, the negative nature of emotions such as contempt, disrespect, hypocrisy, arrogance, schadenfreude, etc., is primarily related to their negative assessment by the object and society, and not to the condition of the subject himself. In this regard, we decided to include in the generated list of names of negative emotions only nouns with subject-negative semantics, i.e. describing emotions that bring unpleasant sensations and states to the subject himself.

After clarifying the concept of "negativity", it becomes necessary to solve the second, main problem — it is necessary to find objective criteria for distinguishing among a wide range of emotive vocabulary those words that not only have an emotive meaning, but name the emotion itself. The first and most obvious of these criteria is partial. Although a particular emotion may not have a substantive name in Russian (cf. angry and *anger), it is obvious that in the general case such names should be sought primarily among nouns. However, this is not enough, because emotive nouns are semantically heterogeneous. In the works of L. G. Babenko, they are divided into different semantic classes — state, attitude, quality, external expression, etc. But even nouns belonging to the class of ‘emotional state’ are semantically different. So, in the thematic subgroup GRIEF in this class, we find such semantically different words as grief and trouble, trauma and misadventure (see ^{[2, pp. 67-68]}). At the same time, it is obvious that the name of an emotion here is only the word grief, and the rest of the words refer to certain events, characterizing them in terms of negative emotions such as ‘grief’ caused by them. An objective criterion is needed to separate some units from others. Obviously, it is necessary to rely on the compatibility features here. The study of compatibility is known to be the most reliable, although not the absolute tool of semantic analysis. This tool has also proven its effectiveness in analyzing emotive nouns. Thus, [Lyashevskaya, Paducheva 2011] demonstrates the possibility of dividing Russian emotive nouns into different semantic classes based on their compatibility with "verbalizers". As the authors write, "the idea of the work was that the ontological (taxonomic) categories of emotion names can be characterized through compatibility with semantic operators that play a verbalizing role, i.e. they associate verb-noun constructions with names that are approximately synonymous with the verb from which the name is formed" ^{[6, p. 24]}. Based on the analysis of the compatibility of emotions within names, the authors identify 5 main semantic categories:

1) category "feeling": stands out for compatibility with test (all words) or bring;

2) the "attitude" category: This class is considered by the authors as a subclass of feelings, since it is also characterized by compatibility with experience. A distinctive feature is its compatibility with suggestion;

3) the "condition" category: stands out by its compatibility with being in (all words), as well as coming into, falling into, experiencing (some words). The words hopelessness and hopelessness are also attributed to this class, for which the combination with "being in ..." seems to be unreasonable.;

4) The "event" category: stands out for compatibility with happen, happen;

5) category "property": It stands out that the compatibility of X-y is characteristic of Y.

Additionally, two more classes are allocated: (6) "action": there is a compatibility with to do, to express, etc.; the noun at the same time calls the speech action. Cf.: to make, to reproach; to insult; (7) "the content of the state": there is a compatibility with to be that... Cf.: my perplexity consists in that...

As the authors note, "there are many words that belong to different categories in different contexts" ^{[6, p. 30]}. Such a combination of semantic categories is observed, for example, in the words disgust (state and attitude), grief (state, event, feeling), awkwardness (feeling, event), disappointment (feeling, state), bewilderment (state, content). And in the verbs of "delivered feelings", according to the observations of the authors, the ambiguity of the type "feeling" / "content" has a regular character ^[6]. However, this syncretism does not prevent us from using belonging to a certain semantic category as the main criterion for solving the problem under discussion. There is every reason to believe that the names of emotions should be sought among the first three categories — ‘feeling', ‘emotional attitude’ or ‘emotional state'. At the same time, it should be borne in mind that in the context of being in ... there may also be names that characterize events from an emotional point of view. So, in the combination of being in trouble, being in danger, the noun characterizes not the emotion of the subject himself, but the specifics of the situation in which he finds himself. If a word means only an ’event’ (trouble, injury), ‘property’ (prone to irritability) or ‘content’ and ‘action’ (the reproach was that ..., to make a reproach), then it can be excluded from the list of names of emotions.

The compatibility analysis conducted by O.N. Lyashevskaya and E.V. Paducheva showed that the verb to experience has the greatest diagnostic power for distinguishing the proper names of emotions – compatibility with it is characteristic of all words of the categories feeling and attitude, as well as for a significant part of the emotives of the category state. It allows you to distinguish between grief and trouble, fear and danger, discontent and reproach, irritation and irritability, etc. and assign only the first word of each pair to the names of emotions.

Since the verb to experience has a synonym to feel, the question arises about the possibility of using the latter as a marker for naming emotions. The same applies to the hyperonym feeling. With many emotives, such a "triple" compatibility is acceptable. For example: to experience fear, to feel fear, a feeling of fear. However, there are important differences that must be taken into account when using these units as markers of emotion names. Feeling and feeling, as opposed to experiencing, can control the subordinate (He was overcome by the feeling that ... / he felt that ...). Such a subordinate clause describes the emotive property of the situation in which the subject finds himself, and not his own state. So, to feel danger means that a person understands that something is dangerous for him, but he does not necessarily feel fear at the same time. Cf. feeling apprehension, which describes the emotional state of the subject himself. The verb to experience has no such valence. Therefore, combinations such as experiencing danger can be perceived as abnormal, and to correct them, you want to insert the word feeling into them. Their event-specific interpretation is also possible, in which words with emotive semes are perceived as names of experienced events. In this case, the plural form is most often used. numbers of emotives. Cf.: experiencing different dangers, troubles (danger, trouble — worse). Cf.:

Panin eloquently portrayed Alexandra, what troubles Russia is experiencing and what lies ahead ...

The dangers experienced by the people among whom E.G. Kiselyova lives, as well as by herself, are largely direct physical dangers: hunger, poverty, violent death. (NKRW)

The ability of the verb to experience to convey meanings such as 'to endure unpleasant events' is recorded in dictionaries. Cf., for example: "To experience, to endure, to feel something. (event, experience, sensation)" ^[5]. It is also important that the verb to experience has a clear bookish coloring. This may limit its compatibility and scope of use. Its following feature also attracts attention — in its semantics it is more closely connected not with emotional, but with cognitive, i.e., rational, in fact, activity. Its rational essence is well explained by the interpretation given by V. Dahl. Sr.: "to experience and experience: to try, to inquire, to be convinced by research, to gain experience, to disassemble, to learn in detail, to learn by experience" ^[4]. Thus, this verb, unlike feeling and feeling, interprets emotions as an object of cognition, not just perception. At the same time, all three units are capable of denoting both physical and emotional feelings.

Although the verb to experience has the greatest diagnostic power, its "bookishness" and possible lexicalized limitations on compatibility make it advisable to use diagnostic contexts and two other types of emotion names — with to feel and feeling. It seems that the regular joint use of emotive nouns with these three units can serve as a fairly reliable means for distinguishing among them the names of emotions proper. However, it should be borne in mind that automatic selection on this basis cannot provide one hundred percent accuracy due to the ability of lexemes to experience, feel and feel combined with the names of events and properties.

Having selected diagnostic criteria, we checked all the words from the original list of emotive nouns based on them. This list was compiled on the basis of the lexicographic sources mentioned above and included more than 500 items. The analysis was carried out using corpus methods. As you know, when analyzing compatibility, it is important to take into account the factor of possible abnormality. The use of text corpora helps to solve this problem in many ways. Relying on a specific corpus of texts has significant advantages over searching for contexts on the Internet. This is rightly pointed out by the authors of the work discussed above, who write the following about this: "We specifically note the difference between the National Corpus material, which we mainly used, and Internet data. The communicative need for verbalization of verbal names is very great, which can lead to violations of existing norms. So, Yandex gives more than a thousand examples of an obviously profane combination * contempt seized. The case does not give any" ^{[6, p. 31]}.

The corpus of texts allows the researcher to specify the exact volume and composition of the studied material, which makes the quantitative results and conclusions about the norm more reliable. In our case, the Main Body of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (NCRR) was used as the most representative. The optimal and most accurate way to analyze corpus compatibility is to collect "sketches" (grammatically related combinations of various types). In the NCRE, this feature is instrumentally implemented in the "Portrait of the Word". However, such data requires a large and high-quality preliminary markup, so there are not enough sketches in the NCR yet. Because of this, we used another tool, the collocation search. Although it inevitably gives a certain percentage of noise due to grammatically unrelated units falling into the same context, it also has the advantage of being able to analyze non-contact compatibility, while statistically assessing the strength of the connection between the collocation and the key word. In our case, the candidate word for naming a negative emotion was used as the key, and the lemmas experience, feeling, feel were used as collocates. The following technique was used: first, contact combinations were searched for each unit of the source list (search distance from -1 to 1); then, if no connection with the object was found, the search window increased (distance from -3 to 3). As a result, a database was compiled that included the following information: the unit of the source list, the collocations found for it, and the strength of the connection with each of them (according to LogDice). For many items on the list, no connection was found with any of the three necessary collocations, even with the expanded search window, which served as the reason for their elimination. However, such a dropout was not automatic. Among such words, there were also words for which compatibility with experience seems possible and quite normative, although it is not fixed in the Main body of the NCR. Cf.: to feel concern, melancholy, etc. Such words were also saved in the list.

The applied methodology allowed us to identify words that can be attributed to the nuclear part of the list, and those that are candidates for it and require further research. The final results of the analysis are presented below. The words are divided into thematic groups (based on the classification of the Alphabet of Emotions dictionary). The groups are arranged alphabetically by their names. Within the group, the units are divided into subgroups based on the strength of their connection to the group. Subgroup 1 includes words with a collocation in the minimum window (-1/1). Subgroup 2 includes words that have this collocation only with an extended search distance (-3/3). Within groups 1 and 2, the words are arranged in descending order of the strength of the connection with the word (see the number after the word). In most cases, the words of these groups are also associated with the other two collocations. Subgroup 3 includes words related only to feeling and/or feeling (distance -1/1 or -3/3, the strength of the connection is not specified). At the end of each group, a list of words is given in which the compatibility of the desired type has not been found in the main corpus, but, from our point of view, it is not excluded. They are conventionally characterized as potential members of the group.^[2]

anxiety

1. excitement 7.98; anxiety 7.87; anxiety 7.77; tension 6.73; excitement 6.68; confusion 6.04; impatience*^[3] 5.87

2. no

3. affect, frenzy, tension, nervousness, preoccupation, loss, exaltation

Potential units: agitation, agitation, psychosis, anxiety

The word concern in the "Alphabet of Emotions" is given only in the KINDNESS group.

grief

1. pain 8.55 (rel.); anguish 8.13; torment 7.83; stress* 7.76; shock 7.23; suffering 7.68; bitterness 7.21; shock 6.71 (including combined shock of feelings); severity 6.59 (rel.; severity of what); grief 6.06; sorrow 6.39; chagrin 6.35; experience 6.02

2. torment 7.19 ; torture (translated) 6.92

3. disorder (mainly combined with feeling disorder)

The strongest connection with experience is found in words that name both physical and spiritual sensations (pain, agony, torment), therefore, additional context analysis is necessary to establish the frequency of their designation of emotions. The words frustration and shock are also included in the "Alphabet of emotions" group of ANXIETY. Agony and torment are synonymous, but the second word often refers to a specific event. The word tragedy also has a connection with experiencing (5,89), but it is not included in the final list, since it denotes a specific event. Cf.: there is not the slightest sign of mental tragedy, such as the young man from The Tale of Woe and Misfortune feels when he breaks away from the old days (Gudzi, NKRYA).

sadness

1. Nostalgia 7.86; longing 7.22; boredom 6.62; despair 6.46; sadness 6.34; sadness 6.29; oppression 6.26

2. Depression 6.57, hopelessness 6.46

3. despondency, depression, hopelessness, melancholy, depression

Potential units: hypochondria, dejection, dejection, melancholy, spleen, prostration

Hopelessness as a dominant quality is included in the "Alphabet of emotions" also in DISBELIEF.

MALICE

1. anger 6.43; anger 5.85

2. anger 7.07; indignation 6.77; rage 6.71; indignation 6.65; rabies (translated) 6.48

3. bitterness, bitterness

Potential units: frenzy, frenzy

Anger and malice are synonymous.

discontent

1. irritation 7.46; annoyance 7.09; dissatisfaction 6.63,

2. discontent 7.01; indignation 6.77; displeasure 6.77

3. Protest

Irritation in the "Alphabet of emotions" is also included in ANGER and, as a dominant, in ANXIETY.

DISBELIEF

1. disappointment 7.54; distrust 6.94

2. Suspicion 5.99

3. hopelessness, disbelief, skepticism

Potential units: pessimism, skepticism

Hopelessness, hopelessness – see SADNESS; jealousy — see DOUBT

HOSTILITY and ENMITY

1. Disgust 8.58; dislike 7.60; hatred 7.56; disgust 7.10; envy 6.80; disgust 6.18; enmity 5.98

b) disgust 7.37; antipathy 7.31; hostility 6.32

c) malevolence, unwillingness, intolerance, dislike, prejudice, rejection*

Potential units: unfriendliness, unfriendliness, phobia*, frenzy,

Hostility and enmity are given in the "Alphabet of emotions" as independent groups. The second group includes hostility and hostility, which can be considered synonymous. Among the DISLIKE group, names of physical feelings such as “disgust" prevail.

resentment

1. humiliation 6.69; resentment 6.23

2. the insult 6.42

3. humiliation, oppression*

Potential units: vulnerability, vulnerability, humiliation

loneliness

1. Loneliness 6.76

2. no

3. separation, orphanhood, isolation*, abandonment (translation)

Potential units: isolation, rejection, disconnection

HUMILITY

1. there is no

2. Humility 7.11; helplessness 6.81

3. Submission*

Potential units: resignation

doubt

1. doubt 7.18; insecurity 7.23; bewilderment 6.96; jealousy 6.20

2. Bifurcation (translation) 6.63

3. indecision, indecision, concern

Confusion – see SHAME

fear

1. fear 8.93; horror 7.68; awe (translated) 7.32; shyness 7.17; fear 6.48; fear 6.00

2. panic 6.32

3. fear, alertness

SHAME (and guilt)

1. Awkwardness 9.27; remorse 8.52; inconvenience 8.37; shame 8.34; embarrassment 7.57; confusion 7.54; regret 7.49; embarrassment 6.70; guilt 6.46; remorse 6.39; confusion 6.08

2. embarrassment 6.34; shame 5.92

3. shyness, dumbfounded, stiffness*

Potential units: dishonor, discouragement, embarrassment, confusion,

Although guilt is considered by psychologists to be a basic emotion, the corresponding separate group in the "Alphabet of Emotions" does not stand out. It could include the words guilt, remorse, remorse, regret. The word regret is also included in the SADNESS group. The high frequency of the words awkwardness, inconvenience, and embarrassment may be related to their transmission of physical properties and states. Confusion, confusion, discouragement, and dumbfoundness can be reasonably attributed to the DOUBT or UNCERTAINTY group. The stylist has the word shame. synonyms are shydoba, shydobishche, and shydobushka. The combinations of embarrassment and shame seem questionable, but they are presented in the corpus. Cf.: (1) Samgin groaned, in addition to pain, he also felt embarrassment (Gorky, NKRR). (2) What a painful feeling it is to feel shame for one's Homeland (Solzhenitsyn, NKRJ).

INDIFFERENCE

1. there is no

2. Emptiness 6.19

3. apathy, lethargy (translated)

Let's summarize some of the results of the analysis:

1. The number of units allocated on the basis of compatibility with testing (see Groups 1 and 2) is, according to the list obtained, 90. These units can be considered as nuclear. Another 42 units showed only a connection with the collocations feeling and feeling, but they can also be included in the core of the semantic class "naming negative emotions".

2. The largest word groups were GRIEF, SHAME (including guilt), and DISLIKE.

3. Closest contact connection with testing (-1/1 distance, LogDice > 8) the words were found to have awkwardness (9.27), fear (8.93), disgust (8.58), pain (8.55), remorse (8.52), inconvenience (8.37), shame (8.34).

Like any semantic list, the resulting list can be further expanded and refined. However, there is reason to believe that it includes all the Russian names of negative emotions, i.e. emotions that cause unpleasant sensations to the subject.

^[1] Cited in ^{[3, p. 49]}

^[2] The data from the NCRA was received in the period December 22-25, 2024..

^[3] The * sign after the word means the absence of a noun in the "Alphabet of emotions".