Cover not available
Article published In:
Functions of Language
Vol. 26:3 (2019) ► pp.308–342

The semantics of evaluational adjectives

Perspectives from Natural Semantic Metalanguage and Appraisal

| Griffith University
| Simon Fraser University
| University of Belgrade

We apply the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach (Goddard & Wierzbicka 2014) to the lexical-semantic analysis of English evaluational adjectives and compare the results with the picture developed in the Appraisal Framework (Martin & White 2005). The analysis is corpus-assisted, with examples mainly drawn from film and book reviews, and supported by collocational and statistical information from WordBanks Online. We propose NSM explications for 15 evaluational adjectives, arguing that they fall into five groups, each of which corresponds to a distinct semantic template. The groups can be sketched as follows: “First-person thought-plus-affect”, e.g. wonderful; “Experiential”, e.g. entertaining; “Experiential with bodily reaction”, e.g. gripping; “Lasting impact”, e.g. memorable; “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent. These groupings and semantic templates are compared with the classifications in the Appraisal Framework’s system of Appreciation. In addition, we are particularly interested in sentiment analysis, the automatic identification of evaluation and subjectivity in text. We discuss the relevance of the two frameworks for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications.

Article outline
  • 1.Background and goals
  • 2.Evaluational adjectives in the Appraisal Framework
  • 3.Explicating evaluational adjectives using NSM
    • 3.1Further details on the NSM approach: Semantic templates
    • 3.2Research process
    • 3.3Template A: “First-person thought-plus-feeling”
    • 3.4Templates B1 and B2: “Experiential” evaluation
    • 3.5Template B1, e.g. entertaining, delightful
      • Entertaining
      • Delightful
    • 3.6Template B2: e.g. gripping, exciting
      • Gripping
    • 3.7Template C: “lasting effect”, e.g. powerful, memorable
      • Powerful
      • Memorable
    • 3.8Template D: “Cognitive evaluation”, e.g. complex, excellent, impressive
      • Complex, e.g. a complex film, a complex argument, a complex character
      • Excellent, outstanding
      • Impressive, brilliant
  • 4.Comparing the NSM approach to evaluation and the Appraisal Framework
  • 5.Broader observations and implications
    • 5.1Implications for sentiment analysis and other language technology applications
    • 5.2Concluding remark
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.00029.god
References
Aloy Mayo, María, Ramtin M. Seraj, Ana P. García Varela, Dan Fass, Fred Popowich, Anoop Sarkar & Maite Taboada
2014 An analysis of affective words in Machine Translation. Proceedings of the Northwest Natural Language Processing Workshop. Seattle, WA. April 2014.Google Scholar
Amberber, Mengistu
(ed.) 2007 The language of memory in a cross-linguistic perspective. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Andrews, Avery D.
2006 Semantic composition for NSM, using LFG + Glue. In Keith Allan (ed.), Selected Papers from the 2005 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Available online at [URL], Accessed 02 Feb 2015.
Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora & Cliff Goddard
2013 ‘Degrad verbs’ in Spanish and English: Collocations, lexical functions and contrastive NSM semantic analysis. Functions of Language 20(2). 219–249. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bednarek, Monika
2006 Evaluation in media discourse: Analysis of a newspaper corpus. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
2008 Emotion talk across corpora. New York, NY: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Calvo, Rafael A., Sidney D’Mello, Jonathan Gratch & Arvid Kappas
2015 The Oxford encyclopedia of affective computing. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Carretero, Marta & Maite Taboada
2014 Graduation within the scope of Attitude in English and Spanish consumer reviews of books and movies. In Geoff Thompson & Laura Alba-Juez (eds.), Evaluation in context, 221–239. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Clough, Patricia Ticineto & Jean O’Malley Halley
(eds.) 2007 The affective turn: Theorizing the social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Coffin, Caroline & Kieran O’Halloran
2006 The role of appraisal and corpora in detecting covert evaluation. Functions of Language 13(1). 77–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Davies, Mark
2008 The corpus of contemporary American English: 450 million words, 1990-present. Available online at [URL]
De Smet, Hendrik
n.d. The meaning of the English present participle. [[URL]] Accessed 29 June 2014. DOI logo
Durst, Ewe
2004 The Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach to meaning. Theoretical Linguistics 29(3). 157–200.Google Scholar
Enfield, Nick & Anna Wierzbicka
(eds.) 2002 The body in description of emotion: Cross-linguistic studies. Pragmatics & Cognition 10(1/2).1–25. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk
2010 Theories of lexical semantics. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff
(ed.) 2008 Cross-linguistic semantics. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2011 Semantic analysis: A practical introduction, 2nd edn. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2012 Semantic primes, semantic molecules, semantic templates: Key concepts in the NSM approach to lexical typology. Linguistics 50(3). 711–743. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 Interjections and emotions (with special reference to “surprise” and “disgust”). Emotion Review 6(1). 53–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 The complex, language-specific semantics of “surprise”. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 13(2). 291–313. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2016a Semantic molecules and their role in NSM lexical definitions. Cahiers de lexicologie 41. 13–36.Google Scholar
2016b Ethnopragmatic perspectives on conversational humour, with special reference to Australian English. Language & Communication 551. 55–68. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff & Andrea Schalley
2010 Semantic analysis. In Nitin Indurkhaya & Fred J. Damerau (eds.), Handbook of Natural Language Processing, 2nd edn, 92–120. London: CRC Press.Google Scholar
Goddard, Cliff, Maite Taboada & Radoslava Trnavac
2016 Semantic descriptions of 24 evaluational adjectives, for application in sentiment analysis. Computing Science Technical Report SFU-CMPT TR 2016-42-1. Simon Fraser University. Available online at [URL]
Goddard, Cliff & Wierzbicka, Anna
2010  want is a linguistic and conceptual universal (response to Khanina). Studies in Language, 34(1), 108–123. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff & Anna Wierzbicka
2014 Words and meanings: Lexical semantics across domains, languages, and cultures. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
2016 Explicating the English lexicon of “doing” and “happening”. Functions of Language 23(2). 214–256. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goddard, Cliff & Zhengdao Ye
(eds.) 2016 “Happiness” and “pain” across languages and cultures. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K.
1961 Categories of the theory of grammar. Word 17(3). 241–292. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1985 An introduction to Functional Grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K. & Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
2014 An introduction to Functional Grammar, 4th edn. London: Edward Arnold. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hasan, Ruqaia
1987 The grammarian’s dream: Lexis as most delicate grammar. In M. A. K. Halliday & Robin Fawcett (eds.), New developments in Systemic Linguistics: Theory and description, 184–211. London: Pinter.Google Scholar
Harkins, Jean & Anna Wierzbicka
(eds.) 2001 Emotions in cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hobbs, Jerry & Andrew Gordon
2008 The deep lexical semantics of emotions. Proceedings of the International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC). Marrakech, Morocco.Google Scholar
Hudlicka, Eva
2003 To feel or not to feel: The role of affect in human-computer interaction. International Journal Human-Computer Studies 591. 1–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Hunston, Susan
2011 Corpus approaches to evaluation. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto
1933 Essentials of English grammar. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Nora
2007 La construcción discursiva del evento conflictivo en las noticias por televisión. Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela PhD thesis.Google Scholar
Keenan, Edward L. & Leonard M. Faltz
1985 Boolean semantics for natural language. Dordrecht: Reidel.Google Scholar
Khanina, Olesya
2008 How universal is wanting? Studies in Language 32(4). 818–865. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson
1999 Philosophy in the flesh: The embodied mind and its challenge to Western Thought. New York, NY: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Levisen, Carsten
2012 Cultural semantics and social cognition. A case study on the Danish universe of meaning. Berlin: Mouton. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Love, Kristina
2006 APPRAISAL in online discussions of literary texts. Text and Talk 26(2). 217–244. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Macken-Horarik, Mary
2003 APPRAISAL and the special instructiveness of narrative. Text 23(2). 285–312. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Martin, J. R.
2003 Introduction: Special issue on appraisal. Text 23(2). 171–181.Google Scholar
2016 Attitudinal relations: continuing the study of lexis. In Leila Barbara, Adail Sebastião Rodrigues-Júnior & Giovanna Marcella Verdessi Hoy (eds.), Estudos e Pesquisas em Linguística Sistêmico-Funcional. São Paulo: Mercado de Letras.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R. & Peter R. R. White
2005 The language of evaluation. New York, NY: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Millar, Neil & Susan Hunston
2015 Adjectives, communities and taxonomies of evaluative meaning. Functions of Language 23(3). 297–331. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moors, Agnes, Phoebe C. Ellsworth, Klaus R. Scherer & Nico H. Fridja
2013 Appraisal theories of emotion: State of the art and future development. Emotion Review 5(2) 119–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neviarouskaya, Alena & Masaki Aono
2013 Sentiment word relations with Affect, Judgment and Appreciation. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing 4(4). 425–437. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Neviarouskaya, Alena, Helmut Prendinger & Mitsuru Ishizuka
2010 @AM: Textual Attitude Analysis Model. Proceedings of the NAACL HLT 2010 Workshop on Computational Approaches to Analysis and Generation of Emotion in Text, 80–88. Los Angeles, CA.Google Scholar
Ngo, Thu & Len Unsworth
2015 Reworking the appraisal framework in ESL research: Refining attitude resources. Functional Linguistics 2(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Page, Ruth E.
2003 An analysis of APPRAISAL in childbirth narratives with special consideration of gender and storytelling style. Text 23(2). 211–237. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pang, Bo & Lillian Lee
2008 Opinion mining and sentiment analysis. Foundations and Trends in Information Retrieval 2(1–2). 1–135. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Picard, Rosemary W.
1997 Affective computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Piwek, Paul
2003 An annotated bibliography of affective natural language generation. Version 1.3, April 2003.Google Scholar
Plutchik, Robert
1980 Emotion: Theory, research, and experience: Vol. 1. Theories of emotion 11. New York, NY: Academic.Google Scholar
Polanyi, Livia & Annie Zaenen
2004 Contextual valence shifters. Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Exploring Attitude and Affect in Text (AAAI Technical Report SS-04-07), 106–111. Stanford, CA: AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, James
1995 The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Raskin, Victor & Sergei Nirenburg
1995 Lexical semantics of adjectives: A microtheory of adjectival meaning. Memoranda in Computer and Cognitive Science MCCS-95-288. Las Cruces, N.M.: New Mexico State University. Available online at [URL], Accessed 26 August 2016.
Riemer, Nick
2006 Reductive paraphrase and meaning: A critique of Wierzbickian semantics. Linguistics and Philosophy 29(3). 347–379. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stubbs, Michael
2001 Words and phrases: Corpus studies of lexical semantics. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Taboada, Maite
2008 The SFU Review Corpus. Simon Fraser University, Available online at [URL]
Taboada, Maite & Jack Grieve
2004 Analyzing appraisal automatically. In Yan Qu, James Shanahan & Janyce Wiebe (eds.), Proceedings of AAAI Spring Symposium on Exploring Attitude and Shanahan, J.G. Affect in Text (AAAI Technical Report SS-04-07), 158–161. Stanford University, CA: AAAI Press.Google Scholar
Taboada, Maite, Marta Carretero & Jennifer Hinnell
2014 Loving and hating the movies in English, German and Spanish. Languages in Contrast 14(1). 127–161. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Taboada, Maite, Julian Brooke, Milan Tofiloski, Kimberly Voll & Manfred Stede
2011 Lexicon-based methods for sentiment analysis. Computational Linguistics 37(2). 267–307. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Trnavac, Radoslava & Maite Taboada
2012 The contribution of nonveridical rhetorical relations to evaluation in discourse. Language Sciences 341. 301–318. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Valitutti, Alessandro, Carlo Strapparava & Oliviero Stock
2004 Developing affective lexical resources. Psychology Journal 2(1). 61–83.Google Scholar
Varela, Francisco J., Evan T. Thompson & Eleanor Rosch
1991 The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vásquez, Camilla
2014 The discourse of online consumer reviews. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
White, Peter R. R.
2016 Evaluative contents in verbal communication. In Andrea Rocci & Louis de Saussure (eds.), Verbal communication, 77–96. Berlin: de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Whitelaw, Casey, Navendu Garg & Shlomo Argamon
2005 Using Appraisal groups for sentiment analysis. Proceedings of ACM SIGIR Conference on Information and Knowledge Management (CIKM 2005), 625–631. Bremen, Germany.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1972 Semantic primitives. Frankfurt: Athenaeum.Google Scholar
1996 Semantics: Primes and universals. New York, NY: OUP.Google Scholar
1999 Emotions across languages and cultures. Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2007 NSM semantics versus Conceptual Semantics: Goals and standards (a response to Jackendoff). Intercultural Pragmatics 4(4). 521–529. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2010 Experience, evidence, and sense: The hidden cultural legacy of English. New York, NY: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 “Pain” and “suffering” in cross-linguistic perspective. International Journal of Language & Culture 1(2). 149–173. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
WordBanks Online
Available online at [URL]
Ye, Zhengdao
2013 Comparing the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach to emotion and the GRID paradigm. In Johnny J. R. Fontaine, Klaus R. Scherer, & Cristiana Soriano (eds.), Components of emotional meaning, 339–409. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 2017 The Semantics of Nouns. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Qiao, Fang & Kexin Jiang
2022. Attitudes Towards Global Warming on Twitter. Journal of Global Information Management 30:7 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
S. Bulgakov, Stanislav, Tatiana A. Belousova, Vita A. Kuzmicheva, Vladimir S. Pugach & Yulia N. Yatsenko
2019. LEXICAL COMBINABILITY OF ADJECTIVES AND NOUNS EXPRESSING ELEMENTS OF APPRAISAL. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews 7:6 ► pp. 978 ff. DOI logo
Sadow, Lauren & Kerry Mullan
2020. A Brief Introduction to the Natural Semantic Metalanguage Approach. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 13 ff. DOI logo
Trnavac, Radoslava & Maite Taboada
2020. Positive Appraisal in Online News Comments. In Studies in Ethnopragmatics, Cultural Semantics, and Intercultural Communication, ► pp. 185 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 9 april 2022. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.