Word Frequency as a Predictor of Word Intensity

• Main Author: Padilla López, Rebeca
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för lingvistik och filologi 2017
• Subjects: word frequency; intensity; sentiment analysis; General Language Studies and Linguistics; Jämförande språkvetenskap och allmän lingvistik
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-325301

In this thesis we explore the intensity of adjectives and how it can be predicted by different word features. We investigate how to accurately determine intensity between synonymous adjectives. For this, we look at features such as word frequency, number of senses and syllable length. Our study is inspired by life satisfaction and happiness surveys and the possibility that differences in intensity in the translation of the adjectives used for the questionnaires could explain the high degree of satisfaction that some countries show. We base our hypothesis on the theories of grammaticalization and semantic bleaching and the discoveries made by other researches about the relations between these word features and word intensity. We focus on studying Danish, English and French. Our study points to a statistically significant negative correlation between word frequency and word intensity.