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School of Humanities G3, Bachelor‟s Course English Linguistics Course Code: EN3103 Supervisor: Ibolya Maricic Credits: 15 Examiner. Maria Estling Vannestål Date: 27 May, 2009 Emotion adjectives A corpus study of the use of terrified, petrified and horrified in British and American English Elin Hagström

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Page 1: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

School of Humanities G3, Bachelor‟s Course

English Linguistics Course Code: EN3103

Supervisor: Ibolya Maricic Credits: 15

Examiner. Maria Estling Vannestål Date: 27 May, 2009

Emotion adjectives

A corpus study of the use of terrified, petrified and horrified

in British and American English

Elin Hagström

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Abstract

For many non-native speakers of English it can be difficult to distinguish semantic

differences between near-synonyms. In order to create idiomatically correct sentences in a

language it is important to know which word to use in a specific context. This study deals

with the emotion adjectives terrified, petrified and horrified, which all refer to an emotion

of fear of something that can or will happen. The present research aims at exploring the

meanings of these adjectives, in American English and British English, and to discover

which words these adjectives tend to collocate with. To obtain data a British Corpus and an

American corpus were used with fiction and newspaper as subcorpora. A quantitative

method was used where the frequencies of terrified, petrified and horrified were counted.

Secondly, the most frequent left- and right-hand collocates were studied. Due to the variety

of collocations found, it was discovered that the meanings between the adjectives differ

somewhat. The literal meaning of petrified is to be hard as a stone while the non-literal

meaning is to be extremely afraid. The literal meanings of terrified and horrified are to be

very afraid, but unlike terrified, horrified also seems to refer to being shocked. It can be

stated that in accordance with how vague the adjective is in its meaning the more

frequently it is used, i.e. terrified is the most frequent adjective in all subcorpora and in

both varieties of English most frequently used while petrified is least frequently used.

Keywords: British National Corpus, collocate(s), collocation(s), Corpus of Contemporary

American English, emotion adjectives, horrified, near-synonyms, petrified, terrified.

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Table of Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Aim .......................................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Scope ........................................................................................................................................ 2

2 Theoretical background ................................................................................................................ 2

2.1 Words and emotion .................................................................................................................. 2

2.2 Categorizing emotions and defining emotion concepts ........................................................... 3

2.3 The problematic distinction between literal meaning and non-literal meaning ....................... 5

3 Material and method ..................................................................................................................... 6

3.1 Material .................................................................................................................................... 6

3.1.1 Corpora, concordance and collocations ............................................................................ 7

3.2 Method ..................................................................................................................................... 8

3.3 Limitations and problems .................................................................................................... 9

4 Results ............................................................................................................................................ 9

4.1 Frequency............................................................................................................................... 10

4.1.1 Terrified .......................................................................................................................... 10

4.1.2 Petrified .......................................................................................................................... 11

4.1.3 Horrified ......................................................................................................................... 12

4.1.4 Comparisons of the frequencies of terrified, petrified and horrified .............................. 12

4.2 Collocations ........................................................................................................................... 13

4.2.1 Comparison of the collocations of terrified, petrified and horrified .............................. 23

4.3 Difference in meaning ........................................................................................................... 24

4.3.1 Terrified .......................................................................................................................... 25

4.3.2 Petrified .......................................................................................................................... 25

4.3.3 Horrified ......................................................................................................................... 25

5 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 26

References ....................................................................................................................................... 29

Appendix ........................................................................................................................................... 1

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1 Introduction

Learning one‟s native language is something that happens subconsciously. We often use

words without ever reflecting very much on their actual meaning. It is however

interesting to analyse words further and come to a better understanding of their

meanings since they also reflect how we perceive the world. The English language has

numerous words that seem to mean the same things. This paper focuses on three

adjectives that according to many speakers of English can be seen as representing

roughly the same emotion. They are often considered to be so called near-synonyms i.e.

their meanings are close but their contextual meanings differ somewhat (Cruse 2004:

156-157). Terrified, petrified and horrified are the adjectives that have been chosen for

this study since all of them denote an emotion of fear of something that will or can

happen. However, they are used in different contexts and for non-native English

speakers it can be problematic to understand the difference between these adjectives.

Before the differences and the similarities between terrified, petrified and

horrified can be established it is also important to define the concept of emotional

language. What then is an emotion? The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

(henceforth LDOCE) [www] defines emotion as “a strong human feeling such as love,

hate, or anger”. The biologist Charles Birch (Wierzbecka 1999:1) argues that emotions

are what matter most in life which is why it is fascinating to analyse emotional words.

A well-known scholar within the field of emotions is Robert Plutchik. He defines

emotions as “complex states of the organism involving feelings, behaviour, impulses,

physiological changes and efforts at control” (Plutchick (1991) in Wierzbecka 1999:1).

The present research is based on data from a British and an American corpus. The

British National corpus (henceforth BNC) and The American Corpus of Contemporary

English (henceforth COCA) were chosen, more precisely the newspapers and fiction

subcorpora. This means that only written examples of sentences with terrified, petrified

and horrified were studied.

1.1 Aim

The aim of this paper is to explore the meanings of the adjectives terrified, petrified and

horrified in British and American English. It also aims at discovering what words they

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tend to collocate with. In order to fulfil this aim, the following research questions are

addressed:

What are the relative frequencies of these adjectives in BrE and AmE?

With what kind of words do these adjectives collocate most often?

Do they tend to collocate with the same words in both varieties of English?

What differences in meaning, if any, are there between the emotion adjectives

terrified, petrified and horrified?

1.2 Scope

The scope of this study is limited to two subcorpora in the COCA and the BNC. The

left- and right-hand collocates of the node adjectives terrified, petrified and horrified

are studied. However, not all words occurring in the company of terrified, petrified and

horrified are studied but mainly nouns and intensifiers which are more important from a

semantic perspective. Nouns and intensifiers are more interesting to investigate than

conjunctions and determiners are since they add information and degree respectively to

the adjectives.

2 Theoretical background

2.1 Words and emotion

Many psychologists and biologists prefer to talk about „emotions‟ rather than „feelings‟

since they regard emotions as more objective in the sense that they have a biological

base. These scholars argue that it is only possible to scrutinize concepts that are real and

objective (Wierzbecka 1999:1). Linguists, on the other hand, usually prefer to talk about

affection rather than emotion. In standard linguistics, affect is used as a broad synonym

for feeling and includes moods and attitudes as well as interactional linguistic

phenomena such as hedging. In other words, affection is a general term for linguistically

expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In

this study, however, the term emotion will be used in order to be as clear as possible and

avoid ambiguity. That this term was chosen instead of affect depends on the adjectives

that were chosen for this study. It seems more appropriate to use the term emotion for

terrified, petrified and horrified since they are short lived states rather than long lived

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states like moods, attitudes and dispositions. Since it seems more accurate to use the

term emotion for these adjectives this term is used in the following pages.

Now that the term emotion has been defined, it is interesting to discover how

emotional words such as e.g. love are defined. When one looks up love in the LDOCE

[www] this emotion is described as “a strong feeling of affection”. This is the case with

most emotional words; they are vaguely described by using the definition of another

emotion. This happens because the meaning of an emotional word is linked to the

description of a feeling. That is to say, in order to understand what love is, one must

understand what affection is and thus, one must understand the concept of love

(Wierzbecka 1999:2-5). Some concepts are universal which means that we know them

intuitively without anyone ever having explained them to us. One example of this sort

of concept is feel. A child picks up the meaning of feel in social interaction before he or

she learns to communicate. The concept of feel can therefore be used in order to explain

more complex concepts such as love or emotion (Wierzbecka 1999:2-5).

2.2 Categorizing emotions and defining emotion concepts

A great deal of work has been done in the recent decade in order to categorize emotions.

No real systematic account of emotions has yet emerged but Johnson-Laird and Oatley

(1989 in Ungerer and Schmid 1996:138-140) are two scholars within the subject of

human cognition who have tried to distinguish between essential emotion words and

more marginal emotion terms. They argue that speakers seem to think that some terms

are more basic than others. For instance love, anger and happiness are seen in English

as more basic emotion words than for example annoyance, rage and regret (Johnson-

Laird & Oatley in Ungerer & Schmid 1996:138-140).

Basicness refers to two things within the category of emotional terms. Firstly, it

means that the concept that corresponds to an emotional word belongs to the middle-

level in a vertical hierarchy of concepts. This means that e.g. „anger‟ lies between the

superordinate level and the subordinate level. On the superordinate level emotion would

be placed and on the subordinate level we would put „annoyance‟ (Kövecses 2000:2-4).

This discussion is made clearer in Figure 1 below:

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Figure 1. Levels of emotion terms (based on Kövecses 2000:3)

Secondly, basicness refers to how prototypical an emotion category is. That is, many

people regard „anger‟ as a better example of an emotion than „annoyance‟.

Psychologists and philosophers have tried to find a limited number of basic emotions.

Johnson-Laird and Oatley have come to the conclusion that “certain emotion terms are

basic and unanalysable in the sense that they cannot be broken down into attributes or

other even more basic emotions” (Johnson-Laird & Oately in Ungerer & Schmid

1996:138). Basic emotion terms are often used to describe less basic emotions.

Johnson-Laird and Oatley describe five basic negative emotions: sadness, anger,

disgust/hate and fear. They also provide us with four positive basic emotions:

joy/happiness and desire/love. Double labels like disgust/hate signify that basic

emotions can be seen as short-lived states (disgust) or dispositions (hate).

Table 1. Basic emotion terms (Johnson-Laird & Oatley 1989 in Ungerer & Schmid

1996: 139)

Negative

emotions

Sadness Joy/Happiness

Anger

Disgust/Hate Desire/Love

Fear

Positive

emotions

What distinguishes these basic emotions from other emotions is mainly the fact that

they seem to be unanalysable and cannot be broken down into even more basic

emotions. These emotion terms also have simple linguistic forms and they are usually

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the first names of emotions that children learn (Johnson-Laird & Oatley in Ungerer &

Schmid 1996:138-140). Wierzbecka (1999:49) is also of the opinion that emotion

concepts have to be separated into different categories but she prefers another type of

categorization. She has chosen to divide emotions into six groups:

1) Something good happened joy, happiness

2) Something bad happened sadness, grief

3) Something bad can/will happen fear, anxiety

4) I don‟t want things like this to happen anger, indignation

5) Thinking about other people envy

6) Thinking about ourselves shame, remorse

Wierzbecka argues that all emotions can fit into any of these six groups. Since this

paper aims at explaining the differences between the less basic emotions terrified,

horrified and petrified the focus is on Wierzbecka‟s third category “something bad

can/will happen”.

It is worth noticing that Wierzbecka only mentions fear relating to the future.

According to her opinion we do not feel fear about things that have already happened in

the past. She argues that terrified, petrified and horrified are emotions related to fear of

something that is about to happen. These emotion words, however, are much stronger in

their meanings than e.g. „fear‟ or „afraid‟ are. A person who is terrified, petrified or

horrified is afraid that something „very bad‟ is going to/can happen (Wierzbecka

1999:75-76).

2.3 The problematic distinction between literal meaning and non-literal meaning

When studying the meaning of words it is important to distinguish between literal and

non-literal meaning. Although this study focuses on emotion adjectives petrified is

included in the study since its non-literal meaning refers to a strong feeling of fear. Many

people probably argue that petrified rather refers to a state of being hard as a stone and

not an emotion. However, in this study both the literal and the non-literal meaning of

petrified are included.

Cruse (2004: 195-197) explains that people seem to think that literal meaning is the

first meaning of a word that springs to mind when reading or hearing a word. However,

people can have different views on what the literal meaning of a word is. Cruse himself

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argues that „expire‟ to him carries the literal meaning „die‟ whereas to his students

„expire‟ carries the literal meaning „come to the end of a period of validity‟. In the same

way some people think that petrified carries the literal meaning „a feeling of fear‟ while

others consider petrified as „being hard as a stone‟.

In dictionaries, the most frequent reading of a word is usually written first but this

might not always be the literal meaning. Cruse uses the verb „see‟ as an example. For

most people the literal meaning of „see‟ is to „have a visual experience‟ but in contrast

„see‟ is most frequently used as referring to „understand‟. It seems that Cruse (2004:195-

197) is of the opinion that there is no literal meaning or that literal meanings differ

greatly depending on person and age since meanings might change over time and also

because many expressions that originally were used as metaphors have changed in

meaning (Cruse 2004:195-197). „Expire‟ probably meant „die‟ to begin with but since it

has been used more and more frequently in sentences such as „my driving license has

expired‟ the word has gradually acquired a different literal meaning, i.e. “come to the end

of a validity”. This is also the case with „crane‟ which refers to both „a bird with very

long legs‟ and „a tall machine used by builders for lifting heavy things‟ (LDOCE [www];

Lundmark 2006:14). To tell which meaning is the literal one is not always easy. When

talking about emotions it is even more difficult to establish their literal meanings since

emotional concepts are likely to differ between individuals. Although this study focuses

on emotion adjectives both the literal meaning and the non literal meaning of petrified

are referred to in the following pages.

3 Material and method

3.1 Material

What is important in order to draw accurate conclusions regarding the meanings of

words is that the chosen corpora are large. Therefore, the primary data sources used in

this paper are the two huge corpora, the BNC and the COCA.

The BNC contains 100 million words of modern BrE. In order to provide a wide

collection of samples of written and spoken BrE it contains language from a great

variety of sources, starting from the later part of the 20th century. The written part of

the BNC includes, for example, extracts from newspapers, specialist periodicals,

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academic books and popular fiction, published and unpublished letters, school and

university essays, among many other kinds of text (BNC [www]).

The COCA contains approximately 385 million words derived from spoken

language, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers and academic texts. The corpus is

updated every six to nine months and serves as a great record of linguistic changes in

AmE (COCA [www]).

3.1.1 Corpora, concordance and collocations

Since this study is based on the analysis of corpora it is essential that the most important

aspects of corpus linguistics are made clear. First of all, it is important to know that a

corpus consists of a selection of texts naturally occurring in a language. These texts are

electronically stored in order to help us monitor and analyse language usage and the

contextual meanings of words. A corpus normally contains millions of words and it is

vital to have a large corpus in order to be able to analyze the structure of a language

accurately (Kennedy 1998: 3-4).

Furthermore, a concordance is a list of word strings retrieved from a corpus. The

concordance shows how often a particular word occurs and each word is still attached to

the original text it belongs to. KWIC (Key Word in Context) is the most widely used

concordance format. This format shows a line of text that can be used in order to

analyse that words most frequently occur before and after a particular key word or node

word (Kennedy 1998:247-251). The following text is an example of a concordance line

retrieved from the BNC:

(1) easy for people to misunderstand religious language and ritual. There

is a very strong tendency to take literally what needs imaginative

interpretation. All the great religions affirm that at

Finally, some words have a tendency to occur in the company of other words. For

instance, the word strong often occurs in the company of tendency, as demonstrated in

the concordance line above (Kennedy 1998:108). It is crucial to have knowledge of

collocations in order to create a correct sentence in a language.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to draw a line between what constitutes a collocation

and what does not. For instance, it is debatable how many times a word must occur in

the company of another word in order for these words to be accepted as collocates

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(Kennedy 1998:111). It is also debatable whether determiners, conjunctions and

prepositions should be accepted as collocations. The frequency of “a/an terrified” and

“some terrified” is very common but these sets of words are not normally considered to

be collocations.

3.2 Method

In order to answer the research questions a quantitative method was chosen. When

doing corpus studies this is the most common approach since it involves analyses of

how frequent certain words are. A strategic choice of investigating the occurrences of

terrified, petrified and horrified in fiction and newspapers was made since it seems

more likely that these words occur more frequently in these text types. An AmE corpus

and a BrE corpus were chosen in order to be able to find out whether these words are

used differently in these two varieties of English.

The COCA and the BNC were searched in order to collect data. After logging on

to the corpus website the emotional adjective e.g. terrified was typed in the search box.

At POS LIST „all adjectives‟ was chosen in order only to get adjectives and no other

word classes. After clicking on „charts‟ and „search‟, tables showing the frequency of

the adjective were shown within the different subcorpora available. The focus was on

the newspaper and fiction tables and on the number of frequencies calculated per

million words.

In order to obtain lists of interesting collocations to analyse the emotional

adjective and an asterisk was typed in the search box, e.g. terrified *. Under sections

„yes‟ was chosen in order to be able to see from which subcorpora each collocation

came. The thirty most common collocations were put in tables and from those tables the

most interesting collocations were selected based on which word class they belong to.

For instance, determiners, conjunctions and prepositions were not selected as they did

not tell anything about the contextual differences between the adjectives. Instead nouns,

verbs and adverbs were selected. Of this reason some of the tables in the result section

only contain six or seven collocations while other tables contain many more

collocations. After being put in tables the different collocations were analysed and

compared.

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3.3 Limitations and problems

The biggest difficulty during this study was to decide what to accept as a collocation. In

the appendix, the thirty words occurring in the company of the node words terrified,

petrified and horrified are presented in tables. According to Kennedy (1998:108), some

linguists argue that all these words are collocations, but as my personal interest was to

find the difference in meaning between the chosen adjectives, this study focuses on

words that intuitively are regarded as being collocations.

For this reason, the section about collocations mainly focuses on nouns and

intensifiers as collocates of terrified, petrified and horrified. It was observed during the

analyses that the possibility to find differences in meaning between the adjectives is

greater when the focus is on nouns, verbs and intensifiers rather than prepositions and

determiners. This means that words such as the, not, a/an, of were not studied. Neither

were collocations where terrified, petrified or horrified were used as verbs e.g. terrified

him rather than adjectives. Nouns are interesting to analyse since adjectives can be

attributes to nouns and thus add information about the noun. However, adjectives can

have a predicative function as well e.g. “he is horrified”. Additionally, intensifiers are

interesting to study since they add degree and intensity to the adjective, such as

absolutely in “absolutely terrified”.

This study focuses on the left-hand and the right-hand collocates of terrified,

petrified and horrified. It would have been interesting to focus on collocates occurring

further away from the node adjectives, i.e. context words, but for lack of time this was

not possible.

Furthermore, in the tables a column showing the frequencies of the collocations in

the whole corpus was included. However, a thorough analysis of this did not fit within

the boundaries of this paper.

4 Results

In this section the results of the corpus investigation are presented by means of several

tables. The study begins by an analysis of the frequencies of terrified, petrified and

horrified. Each emotion adjective is analysed and exemplified in a separate section

before they are compared. After frequency, collocations and differences in meanings are

discussed.

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4.1 Frequency

4.1.1 Terrified

Table 2 below shows the frequency of terrified in AmE and BrE within the subcorpora

fiction and newspaper. All figures in Table 2 show the frequency per million words,

meaning for example that out of a million words terrified occurs 29.5 times in BrE

fiction.

Table 2. The frequencies of terrified in BrE and AmE fiction and newspaper

Subcorpora BrE AmE

Fiction 29.5 29.8

Newspaper 18.7 5.6

As can be seen, terrified is used more often in fiction than in newspapers. Example (2)

was found in an AmE newspaper whereas example (3) was found in AmE fiction.

(2) terrified tourists and residents fled the second bombing,

(3) It hisses with a terrified breath full of wild fear.

Generally, emotions occur more frequently in fiction than in other text types. What is

most noteworthy in Table 2 is that the occurrences of terrified in AmE newspapers are

much lower than the occurrences of terrified in BrE newspapers. This is remarkable

since the use of terrified in fiction is as common in both varieties of English. When

looking closer at the topics and headings of the newspaper articles in the COCA and the

BNC no clue was found to why terrified is much more frequent in BrE newspapers

compared to AmE newspapers. Example (4) below is an extract from AmE newspapers

while example (5) is taken from a BrE newspaper.

(4) reports of rape and murder terrified America in the initial hours

following the storm

(5) A terrified woman driver fled across six lanes of a motorway after a

man tried to grab her

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Since no difference in the use of terrified was found between AmE newspapers and BrE

newspapers it might be the case that another emotion adjective for fear is used to

express fear in AmE newspapers. However, such a synonym was not found in this

study. As the following pages will show neither petrified nor horrified were frequently

used in US newspapers. Alternatively, it might be a question of formality between AmE

and BrE if the use of emotion words in US newspapers is much lower compared to BrE

newspapers. That would indicate that AmE is more formal since they use less emotion

words. However, more studies must be conducted before this hypothesis can be

confirmed.

4.1.2 Petrified

Table 3 below shows the occurrences per million words of petrified in AmE and BrE

within the subcorpora fiction and newspaper.

Table 3. The frequencies of petrified in BrE and AmE fiction and newspaper

Subcorpora BrE AmE

Fiction 3.7 3.4

Newspaper 1.7 1.3

Table 3 shows that the emotion adjective petrified is used very rarely in both AmE and

BrE. We can also see that petrified is used more in fiction than in newspapers in the

same way as terrified is. In Table 3, however, the frequencies of the word petrified

seem to be similar in both varieties of English. That is to say, petrified is used

approximately as frequently in both varieties of English in the subcorpora fiction and

newspaper. Even though the number of occurrences of petrified is somewhat higher in

BrE, no conclusions can be drawn on petrified being used more frequently in BrE since

the numbers differ so little. Examples (6) and (7) below show how petrified is used in

BrE fiction (6) and in AmE newspapers (7). As one can see, petrified carries two

different meanings, which are discussed in Sections 4.2 and 4.3.2

(6) the latest shapes in petrified wood adorning the mantelpieces

(7) After the accident, he's petrified to go on the school bus

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4.1.3 Horrified

Table 4 below shows the frequencies of horrified in AmE and BrE in the genres fiction

and newspapers.

Table 4. The frequencies of horrified in BrE and AmE fiction and newspaper

Subcorpora BrE AmE

Fiction 18.8 12.5

Newspaper 13.1 4.0

Out of one million words horrified is used 18.8 times in BrE fiction and 12.5 times in

AmE fiction. Horrified is used less often in newspapers just like terrified and petrified

are. However, the frequency of horrified in newspapers is considerably higher in BrE

than in AmE. Out of one million words in the newspaper subcorpus there are 13.1

occurrences of horrified in BrE, while there are only 4.0 occurrences of horrified in

AmE. Horrified is, in both genres, more common in BrE than in AmE.

Concordance line (8) below is an example from AmE newspapers while

concordance line (9) is an example from BrE fiction.

(8) the world was horrified by photographic images of Iraqi detainees being

tortured and humiliated by American soldiers

(9) She stopped, horrified at what she had been about to say

4.1.4 Comparisons of the frequencies of terrified, petrified and horrified

Terrfied is the adjective out of these three that is more commonly used in both AmE and

BrE both in fiction and in newspapers. In AmE terrified is used much more often than

petrified and horrified. Furthermore, the data show that none of these emotion

adjectives are used frequently in AmE newspapers. There is a chance that emotional

adjectives are less used in AmE newspapers than they are in BrE newspapers, or

alternatively they use other words than terrified, petrified and horrified for describing

fear in AmE newspapers. Generally, all three adjectives are more frequently used in

BrE and petrified is the least used one in both varieties of English.

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4.2 Collocations

In this section the left -and right-hand collocates of terrified, petrified and horrified are

presented and analysed. Collocates are the words surrounding the node words i.e.

terrified, petrified and horrified. Collocation is the set of words containing both the

node word and the left- or right-hand collocate. Thus, absolutely terrified is a

collocation whereas absolutely is a left-hand collocate of terrified.

When compiling the collocations, the frequencies of the collocations in the whole

corpus were included also, in order to show the overall frequency of the collocations. It

is interesting to see how common a collocation is in fiction and newspaper and then

compare to how common it is generally, in the whole corpus. All figures in the

following tables show the frequency per million words.

As most adjectives, terrified, petrified and horrified carry two grammatical

functions; one attributive function and one predicative function. When the node

adjective occurs to the left of the collocate the adjective has an attributive function as in

example (10) below. When the adjective has an attributive function the adjective is

usually preceding the noun which it modifies (Estling Vannestål 2007:220).

(10) Mack sees his own terrified face staring back from the mirror

In contrast the adjective has a predicative function when it describes either the subject

or the object (Estling Vannestål 2007:220) as in examples (11) below.

(11) The hitchhiker looks petrified.

Tables 5 and 6 below show the most common right-hand collocates of terrified in AmE

and BrE.

Table 5. Right-hand collocates of terrified in AmE

Collocates Fiction Newspaper The whole corpus

Terrified eyes 18 1 22

Terrified young 11 2 21

Terrified face 16 0 20

Terrified people 2 7 18

Terrified look 8 1 11

Terrified scream 8 0 10

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Table 6. Right-hand collocates of terrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole corpus

Terrified eyes 10 0 11

Terrified woman 1 6 7

Terrified children 2 3 6

Terrified child 5 0 5

Terrified horse 4 0 4

Terrified horses 3 0 3

Terrified glance 3 0 3

Terrified face 3 0 3

When comparing Tables 5 and 6 above, we see that the most common collocation in

both varieties of English is terrified eyes with 22 occurrences in the whole COCA and

11 occurrences in the whole BNC. Another collocation that is common in both varieties

of English is terrified face. Both of these collocations occur mainly in fiction. Also

terrified look and terrified glance are common collocations and these sets of words are

closely connected to terrified face and terrified eyes since they all refer to someone

looking terrified. Example (12) below is taken from AmE fiction.

(12) seeing the last plea for mercy in the terrified eyes.

What is noteworthy is that terrified woman is common in BrE newspapers while

terrified people is more common in AmE newspapers. Possibly, it can be assumed that

AmE tend to be more gender-neutral. On the other hand, it might be the case that

newspapers in the US do not write about things that happen to single individuals but

rather write about big events affecting more people and thus more often write terrified

people rather than terrified woman. The US is after all a much larger country than the

UK, with many more crimes happening every day. However, it is peculiar that terrified

man is not a common collocation in BrE while terrified woman is.

(13) A terrified woman handed over cash after being threatened with an

imitation handgun

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(14) Terrified children were led outside in their costumes away from the

poisonous fumes.

(15) Hundreds of terrified people waiting to hear Mandela ran for cover as

police fired blasts of shotgun pellets.

Even though terrified women was not among the thirty most common collocations in

either variety of English it was more common than the use of terrified men. Women are

thus, more terrified than men are in AmE and BrE and it can be assumed that women

are more often victims of crime. However, these are only speculations so far.

It is also noteworthy that terrified young is more common in AmE newspapers

while terrified children is more common in BrE newspapers. Young carries a vaguer

meaning than children since young includes both teenagers and children. This is

probably the reason for why the occurrences of terrified young are much higher than the

occurrences of children are in all subcorpora. In AmE terrified young occurs 21 times in

all subcorpora while terrified children occurs six times in all subcorpora in BrE.

Furthermore, it is a bit surprising that terrified horse and terrified horses are such

common collocations in BrE fiction. Examples (16) and (17) below were retrieved from

BrE fiction. The first concordance line in (16) is a good example of how terrified horse

is used as a simile in order to compare the sudden movement of the land to the

behaviour of a terrified horse.

(16) The land bucked and heaved like a terrified horse

(17) there was always more chaos from the terrified horses than from

the loss of men.

Tables 7 and 8 below show the most common left-hand collocates of terrified in AmE

and BrE. The figures show the occurrences per million words.

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Table 7. Left-hand collocates of terrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

corpus

so terrified 34 12 101

too terrified 27 6 45

absolutely terrified 10 5 37

looked terrified 30 1 32

more terrified 14 1 27

just terrified 3 2 25

really terrified 4 3 19

still terrified 9 0 19

suddenly terrified 14 0 18

looks terrified 13 2 17

Table 8. Left-hand collocates of terrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

corpus

so terrified 11 3 29

absolutely terrified 6 6 22

too terrified 3 13 18

still terrified 4 1 9

just terrified 4 0 6

more terrified 3 1 6

looked terrified 5 0 6

obviously terrified 4 0 6

clearly terrified 2 0 5

always terrified 1 0 4

There are no big differences between the word-classes which appear as left-hand

collocates of terrified in AmE and BrE. Absolutely, just, looked, more, still, so and too

are in both varieties of English words that frequently occur before terrified. All of these

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left-hand collocates, except looked, are adverbs adding degree and intensity to the node

adjective.

Nevertheless, there are big differences between how often these collocations

occur in AmE and BrE. For instance, so terrified occurs 34 times in AmE fiction and 12

times in AmE newspapers but only 11 times in BrE fiction and 3 times in BrE

newspapers.

Examples (18) and (19) below show how terrified can be used. Example (18) was

taken from BrE while (19) was taken from AmE.

(18) The sight of Ronald Reagan on television clearly terrified the Boll

Weevils and the Democratic leadership

(19) " We are really terrified and living in horror, " he said.

Below are two tables presenting the most common collocates appearing before petrified.

Table 9 presents the AmE collocations whereas Table 10 shows the BrE collocations.

Table 9. Right-hand collocates of petrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole corpus

Petrified forest 12 14 65

Petrified wood 23 12 50

Petrified man 0 1 14

Petrified gardens 1 0 12

Petrified men 0 0 6

Petrified sand 0 1 5

Petrified trees 0 0 4

Petrified forests 3 0 3

Petrified birds 1 0 2

Petrified bones 0 0 2

Petrified bread 0 1 2

Petrified coral 1 0 2

Petrified lava 2 0 2

Petrified life 0 0 2

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Table 10. Right-hand collocates of petrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole corpus

Petrified forest 1 0 6

Petrified wood 3 0 3

Petrified lump 0 0 2

Petrified trees 0 0 2

Petrified zoo 0 0 1

Petrified whirlpool 1 0 1

Petrified monster 1 0 1

Petrified Marxism 0 0 1

Petrified tree 1 0 1

Petrified trawler 1 0 1

Petrified toddler 0 0 1

Petrified state 0 0 1

Petrified spaghetti 0 0 1

Petrified silence 0 0 1

It is clear that petrified carries a different meaning than terrified due to the different

collocations we get from the tables above. Petrified is commonly used with uncountable

nouns such as forest, tree and wood. In this company petrified refers to something that

has died and changed into stone. Most of the AmE and BrE collocations refer to

something that has turned into stone or something that is unable to move. However, if

prepositions would have been included in the collocations studied in this paper, then

more instances with the non-literal meaning of petrified would have been found. The

sentence below is an example of how the non-literal meaning of petrified is used.

(20) She is absolutely petrified of that cat.

The non-literal meaning of petrified is thus to be so afraid of something that you are

unable to move. When talking about petrified forest and petrified wood people refer to

the literal meaning of petrified. As discussed in Section 2, people tend to have different

views on what the literal meaning of a word is. Thus, it might be the case that some

people think that petrified carries another literal meaning.

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As Table 10 shows, two of the collocations found are much more common in

AmE than in BrE. Petrified forest and petrified wood occurs many more times in AmE

compared to BrE. However, in the US there are some large national parks with petrified

woods and petrified forest while there are no such parks in the UK. For instance in

Arizona in the US there is a famous park called the petrified forest. It seems reasonable

to argue that this provides some explanation for the high number of occurrences of

petrified forest in AmE compared to the low number in BrE.

Tables 11 and 12 below show the most frequent left-hand collocations of petrified

in AmE and BrE.

Table 11. Left-hand collocates of petrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

absolutely petrified 5 3 14

like petrified 3 0 7

so petrified 0 1 5

just petrified 0 0 4

looks petrified 4 0 4

totally petrified 1 0 3

freaking petrified 2 0 2

completely petrified 1 0 2

bit petrified 0 0 2

giant petrified 1 0 2

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Table 12. Left-hand collocates of petrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

like petrified 1 0 3

absolutely petrified 0 1 3

always petrified 0 0 2

almost petrified 2 0 2

stood petrified 1 0 2

still petrified 1 0 2

so petrified 1 0 2

totally petrified 1 0 1

justifiable petrified 0 0 1

just petrified 0 0 1

sitting petrified 0 1 1

There are no big differences between the word-classes appearing as left-hand collocates

of petrified in AmE and BrE. The adverbs and intensifiers absolutely, like, too, so, just

and totally are common in both varieties. In BrE stood petrified and sitting petrified are

relatively common collocations. They both refer to the non-literal meaning of petrified

since they refer to being very still. Looks petrified was obtained from AmE and also

this collocation refers to the non-literal meaning of petrified. Looks, stood and sitting

are all verbs and it seems as if the non-literal meaning of petrified always appears when

the left-hand collocate of petrified is a verb, thus when petrified is used predicatively.

(21) For just a few seconds she stood petrified

(22) David Roberts sitting petrified but unhurt in the wreckage.

Table 13 and 14 below show the most common collocates appearing before horrified in

AmE and BrE.

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Table 13. Right-hand collocates of horrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole corpus

Horrified look 0 3 25

Horrified face 13 0 13

Horrified fascination 7 1 10

Horrified expression 6 0 8

Horrified disbelief 6 1 7

Horrified faces 5 0 6

Horrified looks 5 0 6

Horrified eyes 5 0 5

Horrified gasp 4 0 5

Horrified mother 0 2 5

Horrified reaction 1 0 5

Table 14. Right-hand collocates of horrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole Corpus

Horrified fascination 14 0 16

Horrified disbelief 5 1 7

Horrified face 6 0 7

Horrified eyes 6 0 7

Horrified silence 7 0 7

Horrified expression 5 0 5

Horrified look 4 0 4

Horrified reaction 2 0 4

Horrified mother 0 2 3

Horrified glance 3 0 3

Horrified cry 3 0 3

Horrified

comprehension

2 0 2

Horrified gaze 2 0 2

Horrified interest 2 0 2

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Table 14 shows that look, face, fascination, expression, disbelief, eyes and mother are

examples of nouns that frequently appear before horrified i.e. when horrified has an

attributive function.

In AmE horrified look occurs 25 times per million words but it never occurs in

fiction and only three times in newspapers. However, in BrE horrified look only occurs

in fiction and never in another genre. Horrified face, on the other hand, only occurs in

fiction and in no other subcorpora in AmE. Thus, horrified look is not used in AmE

fiction while horrified face is.

It is noteworthy that horrified mother is more common in newspapers than in

fiction. This is not very surprising since newspapers are more eager to sell many copies

everyday and they tend to use a more straightforward and sensational language in order

to attract readers.

(23) One itemised phone bill to Bedworth's horrified mother ran to 34

pages of listed calls, the jury heard.

Tables 15 and 16 below show the most frequent left-hand collocates of horrified in

AmE and BrE.

Table 15. Left-hand collocates of horrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

so horrified 13 2 32

looked horrified 5 12 26

Absolutely horrified 2 3 14

looks horrified 10 1 13

just horrified 0 0 10

really horrified 2 0 8

too horrified 8 0 8

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Table 16. Left-hand collocates of horrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

so horrified 4 1 12

looked horrified 7 0 12

absolutely horrified 2 1 10

utterly horrified 1 2 5

rather horrified 3 0 3

almost horrified 2 0 2

apparently horrified 1 0 2

clearly horrified 1 0 2

There are no big differences among the collocates occurring on the left side of horrified

when looking only at the word-classes. So, looked and absolutely are frequently used

before horrified in both varieties of English. However, when looking at the frequency of

the collocations there are clear differences. For instance, looked horrified seems more

common in AmE newspapers than in AmE fiction. When comparing these numbers to

the frequency among the subcorpora in BrE it is obvious that looked horrified is used

differently in BrE. In BrE, looked horrified is most frequently used in fiction and it is

never used in newspapers. This also corresponds to the findings among the right-hand

collocates of horrified, since horrified look never occurred in AmE fiction but occurred

a few times in AmE newspapers. In BrE neither horrified look nor looked horrified

occur in newspapers while they do occur in fiction.

What is more, so horrified occurs four times per million words in BrE and 13

times in AmE fiction. Generally, i.e. in all subcorpora, so horrified occurs 12 times in

BrE and 32 times in AmE. Thus, so horrified is more common in AmE than in BrE.

4.2.1 Comparison of the collocations of terrified, petrified and horrified

Terrified and horrified are surrounded by similar words in both varieties of English.

Terrified eyes, horrified eyes, terrified face, horrified face and terrified look, horrified

look are used frequently in both AmE and BrE. They are especially common in fiction.

In AmE newspapers terrified people tend to be more frequent than terrified woman and

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terrified children which are common in BrE newspapers. This might be caused by a

stronger will to use a more thrilling and shocking language in BrE newspapers.

Horrified seems to carry some difference in meaning when we compare the words

occurring with horrified and terrified. In both varieties of English, horrified is used

attributively with nouns such as fascination, disbelief, expression, and reaction. In other

words, it is more common to say in both AmE and BrE e.g. horrified reaction or

horrified expression rather than terrified reaction or terrified expression. It is also

interesting that horrified mother is more common than terrified mother while terrified

woman is more common than horrified woman.

From the words occurring in the company of petrified it is clear that petrified

carries a more specific meaning than terrified and horrified do. Petrified is, in both

varieties of English, habitually used attributively together with nouns such as tree,

forest and wood while terrified and horrified are not. Petrified does carry a similar

meaning to terrified and horrified but petrified additionally refers to something that has

died and changed into stone. The literal meaning of petrified is to have died and

changed into stone while the non-literal meaning is to be so afraid that you are

paralyzed and cannot move.

When looking at the words to the left of terrified, petrified and horrified we can

see that many intensifiers such as so, absolutely, just and looks are very common among

all of the adjectives. However, too is not frequently used with petrified in either AmE or

BrE, while it is frequently used with the two other adjectives.

The intensifier really is more frequent together with these adjectives in AmE than

it is in BrE. In BrE, however, clearly is more frequent than it is in AmE.

(24) Now Jeralyn was really horrified. (AmE)

(25) this person clearly terrified this woman. (BrE)

4.3 Difference in meaning

It seems obvious that in order to understand what for instance terrified is, one must

know what the basic emotion fear is. In Section 2.2 different ideas on how to

categorize emotions were presented and it was explained that fear belongs to the basic

level whereas emotions such as fright and anxiety belong to the subordinate level. It is

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plausible to argue that also terrified, petrified and horrified belong to the subordinate

level under fear. However, terrified, petrified and horrified refer to something worse

than just fear and it seems necessary to come up with more categories than the ones that

were presented in Section 2.2 in order to separate for instance petrified from worried.

4.3.1 Terrified

The literal meaning of terrified is according to the LDOCE [www] to be “very

frightened”. Below is one example of terrified, extracted from an AmE newspaper.

(26) Ford is terrified of losing his superstar touch.

4.3.2 Petrified

The meaning of petrified is according to the LDOCE [www] to be “extremely frightened,

especially so frightened that you cannot move or think”. However, if petrified occurs in the

company of trees or wood, the LDOCE explains that it means “wood, trees etc., that have

changed into stone over a long period of time”. When the different collocations, presented

in Section 4.2, were compared it was clear that petrified carries a different literal-meaning

from terrified and horrified. Petrified means that something has died and changed into

stone but non-literally it means that one is so afraid that one is paralysed.

Below is an example of a concordance line showing that petrified carries a different

literal meaning from terrified and horrified.

(27) Slivers of black burnt onion, petrified bacon rinds, lacy brown

scraps of fried eggs.

4.3.3 Horrified

According to the LDOCE [www] the literal meaning of horrified is that you “feel very

shocked and afraid or upset”. In Section 4.2, it was found that horrified is used

frequently with nouns such as expression, disbelief and reaction.

When studying the collocations and some concordances with horrified, it seems as

if the difference between terrified and horrified is that horrified refers to being shocked

and upset whereas terrified does not seem to do so. The sentence below makes the

meaning of horrified a bit clearer.

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(28) The price of a full season ticket was going to be as much as a

term's school fees, and when I saw my father's horrified face, I

said, "I can cycle."

In Section 4.2 where collocations were analysed, it was interesting to discover that

horrified mother was more frequent than terrified mother. The reason why this is the

case might be because children have a tendency of not only frightening their mothers

but also shocking them and making them upset. Extract (29) below shows an example

of this.

(29) convinced his horrified mother, who wanted him to be a

preacher, that acting was only a stopgap measure until he

became a writer.

5 Conclusion

Four research questions were addressed in Section 1.1 in order to fulfil the aim of this

study, which was to explore the meanings of the adjectives terrified, petrified and

horrified. In this section the answer to the research questions are discussed.

First of all it became clear during this study that out of the three adjectives that have

been studied, terrified is most frequently used in both AmE and BrE. The meaning of

terrified is less specific than the meanings of petrified and horrified and that is probably

the reason why terrified is more frequently used. Terrified means to be very frightened,

whereas horrified means that one, in addition to being very afraid, is also shocked and

upset. Petrified, on the other hand, means that one is so extremely afraid that one is unable

to move or think. The adjective that was least used in AmE and BrE was petrified. The

reason why petrified is least used might be since its meaning is more specific than the

meanings of terrified and horrified are. Petrified carries two different meanings. The literal

meaning is to be hard like stone, while the non-literal meaning is to be so frightened that

one cannot move. Consequently, it seems unreasonable to argue that petrified is a near-

synonym to terrified and horrified. Furthermore, if one were to put terrified, petrified and

horrified on a scale of degree, depending on how frightened someone is, it seems correct to

place petrified as number one. That is, when someone is petrified someone is more afraid

than someone is who is terrified, since someone who is petrified is so very afraid that he or

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she is paralyzed. In contrast, it is difficult to know where to place horrified and terrified on

such a scale. Even though we know that horrified additionally refers to being shocked it is

difficult to distinguish the degree of fright between horrified and terrified. Consequently, it

seems plausible to argue that terrified and horrified can be considered as near-synonyms.

What is more, terrified, petrified and horrified most often collocate with nouns and

adverbs. The most frequent adverbs that were used in the company of terrified, petrified

and horrified were absolutely, so and just. The most frequent nouns occurring in the

company of these adjectives were eyes, face, and look. However, these nouns were not

very frequent in the company of petrified. Instead uncountable nouns such as wood and

forest are more frequent. In these cases petrified means that something has turned into

stone over a very long period of time.

It is obvious that the meaning of horrified differs from the meaning of terrified and

petrified, when collocations and concordance lines are studied. Since horrified often occurs

attributively, i.e. to the left of nouns such as reaction, disbelief and fascination it became

clear that horrified refers to being upset and shocked as well as very frightened.

Furthermore, all adjectives tend to occur with the same kind of word-classes in both

varieties of English. However, some differences regarding the intensifiers were found. For

instance, really is more commonly used in AmE while clearly is more frequent in BrE.

In addition, some general conclusions can be drawn regarding the usage of terrified,

petrified and horrified. Firstly, all of these emotion adjectives are more frequent per

million words in BrE than in AmE and secondly, they are more frequent in fiction than in

newspapers.

The results of the present research are significant since they explain the difference

between three adjectives that according to many people seem to represent the same

emotion. It is important to know the difference between near-synonyms if one wants to

create idiomatically correct sentences in a language. Native speakers normally have an

instinct telling them which word to use in a specific context but for non-native speakers the

difference between these words must be explained to avoid mistakes and

misunderstandings.

Many suggestions for further research can be made since there are many synonyms

that need to be investigated in order to provide better understandings of the contextual

differences between these words. However, in connection with the emotion adjectives

which are investigated in this paper it would be interesting to explore the meanings of

other similar adjectives such as appalled, frightened and scared. It would also be

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interesting to see how the results would differ if prepositions would have been counted as

collocates.

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References

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Estling Vannestål, Maria. 2007. A University grammar - with a Swedish perspective. Lund:

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Appendix

Table 1. Words on the first to the right of terrified in AmE

Table 2. Words on the first to the right of terrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

Terrified of 85 30 204

Terrified that 30 6 68

Terrified by 20 7 51

Terrified to 11 15 39

Collocates Fiction Newspaper The whole

corpus

Terrified of 261 87 664

Terrified that 86 21 210

Terrified by 58 19 156

Terrified and 67 140 140

Terrified to 59 19 132

Terrified me 40 10 71

Terrified her 46 3 57

Terrified him 39 2 56

Terrified at 15 6 49

Terrified the 15 8 42

Terrified about 5 5 35

Terrified for 16 3 33

Terrified as 21 1 30

Terrified he 16 6 29

Terrified eyes 18 1 22

Terrified when 4 7 22

Terrified I 12 2 21

Terrified young 11 2 21

Terrified face 16 0 20

Terrified because 2 2 18

Terrified people 2 7 18

Terrified they 5 2 18

Terrified in 8 1 17

Terrified she 10 3 15

Terrified them 9 0 15

Terrified or 4 0 12

Terrified look 8 1 11

Terrified but 7 0 10

Terrified if 3 0 10

Terrified scream 8 0 10

Page 34: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

2

Terrified and 19 2 31

Terrified at 8 2 21

Terrified the 8 2 20

Terrified me 6 0 17

Terrified her 14 1 16

Terrified when 4 3 13

Terrified eyes 10 0 11

Terrified she 9 1 11

Terrified he 8 1 11

Terrified as 3 1 7

Terrified woman 1 6 7

Terrified children 2 3 6

Terrified out of 4 0 6

Terrified them 2 0 6

Terrified child 5 0 5

Terrified but 0 2 5

Terrified about 1 1 4

Terrified I 0 0 4

Terrified in 1 0 4

Terrified him 4 0 4

Terrified horse 4 0 4

Terrified they 1 1 4

Terrified horses 3 0 3

Terrified in case 1 0 3

Terrified glance 3 0 3

Terrified face 3 0 3

Table 3. Words on the first to the left of terrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

was terrified 290 61 639

and terrified 115 18 207

the terrified 120 15 188

are terrified 21 27 161

is terrified 87 11 154

were terrified 37 24 148

so terrified 34 12 101

be terrified 39 14 98

been terrified 48 10 80

am terrified 19 15 48

too terrified 27 6 45

of terrified 14 13 42

it terrified 24 3 41

that terrified 19 5 40

absolutely terrified 10 5 37

looked terrified 30 1 32

Page 35: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

3

her terrified 21 1 27

how terrified 14 2 27

more terrified 14 1 27

being terrified 9 4 25

just terrified 3 2 25

had terrified 19 0 22

as terrified 13 1 21

with terrified 14 0 20

really terrified 4 3 19

still terrified 9 0 19

suddenly terrified 14 0 18

but terrified 7 3 17

looks terrified 13 2 17

his terrified 12 0 16

Table 4. Words on the first to the left of terrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

was terrified 81 30 184

and terrified 22 7 44

the terrified 21 15 44

been terrified 20 4 33

is terrified 4 6 31

were terrified 10 9 31

be terrified 6 5 30

so terrified 11 3 29

are terrified 2 10 25

absolutely terrified 6 6 22

too terrified 3 13 18

being terrified 4 3 10

his terrified 6 3 10

of terrified 6 1 10

it terrified 6 0 9

still terrified 4 1 9

have terrified 6 1 8

their terrified 2 3 7

just terrified 4 0 6

more terrified 3 1 6

looked terrified 5 0 6

obviously terrified 4 0 6

clearly terrified 2 0 5

all terrified 3 1 5

as terrified 1 2 5

he terrified 0 1 5

how terrified 2 0 4

Page 36: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

4

am terrified 0 0 4

always terrified 1 0 4

not terrified 1 0 4

Table 5. Words on the first to the right of petrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

Petrified forest 12 14 65

Petrified wood 23 12 50

Petrified of 4 5 31

Petrified man 0 1 14

Petrified by 3 1 13

Petrified gardens 1 0 12

Petrified and 5 2 12

Petrified that 3 2 12

Petrified at 5 1 10

Petrified in 3 1 7

Petrified to 5 1 7

Petrified with 3 0 7

Petrified about 0 3 6

Petrified men 0 0 6

Petrified sand 0 1 5

Petrified the 2 1 4

Petrified trees 0 0 4

Petrified when 2 0 4

Petrified into 0 0 3

Petrified I 1 1 3

Petrified forests 3 0 3

Petrified as 1 0 2

Petrified birds 1 0 2

Petrified beyond 1 1 2

Petrified bones 0 0 2

Petrified bread 0 1 2

Petrified for 0 1 2

Petrified coral 1 0 2

Petrified lava 2 0 2

Petrified life 0 0 2

Table 6. Words on the first to the right of petrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

Petrified of 2 2 19

Petrified with 4 0 9

Petrified forest 1 0 6

Page 37: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

5

Petrified when 2 1 4

Petrified wood 3 0 3

Petrified in 0 0 3

Petrified by 1 1 3

Petrified and 1 0 3

Petrified at 1 0 2

Petrified I 0 0 2

Petrified lump 0 0 2

Petrified that 0 0 2

Petrified trees 0 0 2

Petrified zoo 0 0 1

Petrified whirlpool 1 0 1

Petrified us 1 0 1

Petrified monster 1 0 1

Petrified me 0 0 1

Petrified Marxism 0 0 1

Petrified tree 1 0 1

Petrified trawler 1 0 1

Petrified toddler 0 0 1

Petrified to 1 0 1

Petrified they 0 0 1

Petrified them 1 0 1

Petrified the 0 0 1

Petrified than 0 0 1

Petrified state 0 0 1

Petrified spaghetti 0 0 1

Petrified silence 0 0 1

Table 7. Words on the first to the left of petrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

the petrified 32 17 93

was petrified 19 14 69

of petrified 17 10 38

a petrified 15 2 33

and petrified 5 9 21

are petrified 4 2 15

absolutely petrified 5 3 14

is petrified 7 2 12

were petrified 2 2 11

be petrified 0 1 9

like petrified 3 0 7

been petrified 2 0 6

at petrified 1 1 5

so petrified 0 1 5

with petrified 2 0 5

just petrified 0 0 4

Page 38: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

6

in petrified 3 0 4

looks petrified 4 0 4

not petrified 1 0 3

on petrified 1 0 3

by petrified 0 0 3

become petrified 2 0 3

am petrified 0 1 3

totally petrified 1 0 3

as petrified 1 0 2

freaking petrified 2 0 2

completely

petrified

1 0 2

bit petrified 0 0 2

had petrified 1 0 2

giant petrified 1 0 2

Table 8. Words on the first to the left of petrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

was petrified 6 5 28

the petrified 6 3 17

a petrified 7 0 11

were petrified 0 1 6

of petrified 2 0 5

been petrified 1 2 4

like petrified 1 0 3

is petrified 0 1 3

absolutely petrified 0 1 3

are petrified 0 1 3

and petrified 2 0 3

always petrified 0 0 2

almost petrified 2 0 2

be petrified 2 0 2

her petrified 2 0 2

in petrified 1 0 2

stood petrified 1 0 2

still petrified 1 0 2

some petrified 1 0 2

so petrified 1 0 2

there petrified 1 0 2

which petrified 1 0 2

totally petrified 1 0 1

those petrified 0 0 1

that petrified 1 0 1

justifiable petrified 0 0 1

just petrified 0 0 1

sitting petrified 0 1 1

Page 39: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

7

she petrified 0 0 1

quietness petrified 1 0 1

Table 9. Words on the first to the right of horrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

Horrified by 239 35 407

Horrified to 53 37 149

Horrified at 52 23 148

Horrified and 20 11 63

Horrified that 15 16 59

Horrified when 13 9 41

Horrified as 23 6 39

Horrified look 0 3 25

Horrified the 4 2 19

Horrified face 13 0 13

Horrified me 4 4 12

Horrified her 7 0 11

Horrified him 4 0 11

Horrified fascination 7 1 10

Horrified expression 6 0 8

Horrified if 2 2 8

Horrified disbelief 6 1 7

Horrified about 0 2 7

Horrified I 4 0 7

Horrified because 0 1 6

Horrified faces 5 0 6

Horrified looks 5 0 6

Horrified but 2 2 5

Horrified eyes 5 0 5

Horrified gasp 4 0 5

Horrified mother 0 2 5

Horrified of 0 2 5

Horrified reaction 1 0 5

Horrified some 1 2 5

Horrified his 4 0 4

Table 10. Words on the first to the right of horrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

Horrified by 29 17 82

Horrified to 27 9 66

Horrified at 17 12 62

Horrified and 5 5 23

Page 40: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

8

Horrified that 6 7 22

Horrified when 5 8 22

Horrified fascination 14 0 16

Horrified as 7 3 13

Horrified her 8 0 8

Horrified if 4 1 8

Horrified disbelief 5 1 7

Horrified face 6 0 7

Horrified eyes 6 0 7

Horrified silence 7 0 7

Horrified the 0 3 6

Horrified expression 5 0 5

Horrified look 4 0 4

Horrified him 3 0 4

Horrified reaction 2 0 4

Horrified mother 0 2 3

Horrified glance 3 0 3

Horrified but 1 1 3

Horrified cry 3 0 3

Horrified some 0 0 3

Horrified both 0 0 2

Horrified

comprehension

2 0 2

Horrified gaze 2 0 2

Horrified interest 2 0 2

Horrified me 0 0 2

Horrified many 0 0 2

Table 11. Words on the first to the left of horrified in AmE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

was horrified 108 72 324

were horrified 15 30 110

be horrified 27 18 105

a horrified 50 9 81

is horrified 40 12 80

and horrified 33 14 75

are horrified 12 11 58

the horrified 25 4 47

been horrified 20 4 32

so horrified 13 2 32

as horrified 10 8 31

looked horrified 5 12 26

of horrified 9 8 24

in horrified 18 2 22

am horrified 4 9 20

Page 41: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

9

that horrified 5 2 16

with horrified 13 1 15

absolutely

horrified

2 3 14

looks horrified 10 1 13

her horrified 6 1 11

all horrified 4 1 10

his horrified 5 2 10

just horrified 0 0 10

it horrified 5 1 9

not horrified 6 0 9

have horrified 5 0 8

really horrified 2 0 8

too horrified 8 0 8

how horrified 3 1 7

this terrified 3 0 7

Table 12. Words on the first to the left of horrified in BrE

Collocations Fiction Newspaper The whole

Corpus

was horrified 50 26 137

be horrified 6 7 41

been horrified 11 5 33

were horrified 2 9 33

in horrified 24 0 27

a horrified 15 5 25

and horrified 8 6 22

are horrified 0 10 14

is horrified 3 7 13

so horrified 4 1 12

looked horrified 7 0 12

her horrified 7 1 10

absolutely horrified 2 1 10

of horrified 3 2 6

as horrified 4 1 6

am horrified 1 3 5

have horrified 3 1 5

it horrified 3 0 5

his horrified 4 0 5

utterly horrified 1 2 5

with horrified 5 0 5

my horrified 2 0 4

has horrified 0 4 4

one horrified 3 0 3

rather horrified 3 0 3

being horrified 0 0 3

their horrified 1 1 3

Page 42: Emotion adjectives - DiVA portal223205/FULLTEXT02.pdf · 2009. 10. 21. · expressed feelings, attitude and moods of all types (Caffi & Janney 1994:327-328). In this study, however,

10

almost horrified 2 0 2

apparently horrified 1 0 2

clearly horrified 1 0 2