A Study on Chinese English Leamers＇ Use of Emotion Words

Most educated Chinese take English as an important communication tool and the language has been increasingly frequently used in all walks of life in the country. This paper is to examine the use of English emotion words on the target group of English learners in China. The study is designed to find out the relationship between the use of emotion words and such relevant variables as language proficiency, gender, and age. The results demonstrate that the use of emotion words is significantly linked to the level of proficiency as well as gender. Age is found to have slight effect on the use of emotion words. The study also reveals that more positive emotion words are produced than negative ones in the speech. Based on the major findings, some implications and suggestions are offered： Firstly, English learners in China are expected to improve their language proficiency, particularly that of listening and speaking. Secondly, they are supposed to enhance their culture awareness of English by means of exposing themselves to as much authentic language as possible.

Chinese emotional words in patients with major depressive disorder during a subliminal Stroop task An event-related potential study

Patients with major depressive disorder （MDD） develop a negative cognitive bias, but how they respond to information in Chinese emotional words is unclear. Here we used a Stroop paradigm with subliminal Chinese emotional words to explore the event-related potential components of abnormal emotional processing Jn patients with MDD. The correct rate was similar in MDD and normal control groups, but MDD reaction time was longer than the normal controls, especially to the negative and neutral stimuli. In N270, repeated-measure analysis of variance demonstrated a significant main effect of the relation electrode and valence on peak amplitude and interactions between valence and electrode site. The peak amplitudes of the three kinds of words were different in the two groups （positive 〉 negative 〉 neutral）. The topography of the difference waves indicated that the difference distributed in the frontal and left parietal-temporal sites across the scalp. In N400, there was a significant main effect of the relation electrode and valence on peak amplitude, and the latency showed a main effect of the electrode and an interaction between electrode and group. The amplitudes induced by type of words were significantly different from each other in both groups （positive 〉 negative 〉 neutral）. The topography of the difference waves indicated that the effect of relation type was primarily at left and right frontal and central and left parietal-temporal regions. Both MDD patients and normal controls exhibited significant emotional Stroop effects during the processing of positive/negative Chinese emotional words. MDD patients showed interference in emotional stimuli in early cognitive processing that induced psychological resource intervention during late emotional information processing.

Predicting Complex Word Emotions and Topics through a Hierarchical Bayesian Network

In this paper, we provide a Word Emotion Topic （WET） model to predict the complex word e- motion information from text, and discover the dis- trbution of emotions among different topics. A complex emotion is defined as the combination of one or more singular emotions from following 8 basic emotion categories： joy, love, expectation, sur- prise, anxiety, sorrow, anger and hate. We use a hi- erarchical Bayesian network to model the emotions and topics in the text. Both the complex emotions and topics are drawn from raw texts, without con- sidering any complicated language features. Our ex- periment shows promising results of word emotion prediction, which outperforms the traditional parsing methods such as the Hidden Markov Model and the Conditional Random Fields（CRFs） on raw text. We also explore the topic distribution by examining the emotion topic variation in an emotion topic diagram.

An Analysis of Surprise Markers in Linguistic Research Articles

To have a better understanding of surprise makers in linguistic Research Articles(RAs),this research selects 85 articles published in Applied Linguistics,analyzes 93 adjective surprise markers according to surprise frame,and explores readers’understanding of surprise markers in terms of the Immersed Experiencer Frame(IEF).The results show that,the Experiencers are activated at the lexical level and 78.49%Experiencers of them are implied,which encourages readers better immersed in the surprise motion.At the clause level,96.77%Triggers are new information,which attracts readers’attention to the information obtained in the present study in the process of Construal.Besides,the Degrees(90.32%are neutral),the Explanations(75.27%are unidentified),and the Resolutions(41.94%do not exist)are also construed at the clause level,which allows readers to make little effort to interpret surprise.In the process of Integration,readers proceed to the Resolutions by new information(34.41%),prior knowledge(20.43%),and speculation(3.23%)at the discourse level.It seems that the surprise markers are mainly used by authors as a means to attract readers and to promote their research.This research validates surprise frame as well as sheds light on emotion words using and comprehending in RAs.