The Referential Structure of the Affective Lexicon

A set of opproximotely 500 words token from the literature on emotion wos examined. The overall goal wos to develop CI comprehensive taxonomy of the affective lexicon, with special attention being devoted to the isolation of terms that refer to emotions. Within the taxonomy we propose, the best examples of emotion terms appear to be those thot (0) refer to internol, mentol conditions OS opposed to physical or external ones, (b) are clear cases of states, and (c) hove affect OS opposed to behavior or cognition OS a predominant (rather than incidental) referential focus. Relaxing one or another of these constraints yields poorer examples or nonexamples of emotions: however, this grodedness is not taken OS evidence thot emotions necessarily defy classical definition.