CHAPTER 11

THE LINGUISTIC BEHAVIOUR OF

THE REACTIONS TO AGENTS LEXICON

11.1  Reactions to Agents -  Evaluative  emotions

With the previous section, there was sometimes a problem in seeing how Ortony et al.'s definition of EVENT could be interpreted with what appeared to be at least an OBJECT, if not an AGENT,  type PHENOMENON, from a linguistic point of view.  In this section the emphasis is on AGENT type PHENOMENA.  They make distinctions between those which refer to one's own actions, where the AGENT is the Self, and those referring to other people's.  The variables which affect the intensity of the emotions are fairly complex, and one can say that these emotions are usually consciously processed.  

Although I attempted to collect examples for all 8 of Ortony et al.'s groups - Pride, Self-Reproach, Appreciation, Reproach, Gratitude, Anger, Gratification and Remorse - I decided to amalgamate Pride with Gratification and Self-Reproach with Remorse.  This was partly because the groups were almost too small to analyse on their own, but largely because the examples with the lexemes involved  did not map on to the emotion types described by Ortony et al. very satisfactorily.   Although at a contextual and psychological level one could make the distinction,  the extra variable required for Gratification and Remorse was not always obvious at a more linguistic level. 

It was fairly easy to allocate the examples for Anger and Gratitude into their respective groups as the lexemes and the psychological types matched quite well.  

11.2  The Pride / Gratification group

The definition for this group is that these emotions result from [APPROVING OF ONE'S OWN PRAISEWORTHY ACTION], with  the Gratification examples including the extra notion of [BEING PLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED DESIRABLE EVENT].  The variables which affect these emotions are:

  1. the degree of judged praiseworthiness

  2. the strength of the cognitive unit with actual agent

  3. deviations of the agent's action from person / role-based expectations (i.e. unexpectedness)

  4. (for Gratification examples only) the degree to which  the event is desirable.

and the examples given are:

(11.1)  (Pride) The woman was proud of saving the life of a drowning child.

(11.2) (Gratification)  The man was gratified by his daughter's achievements.

11.2.1  The lexicon of Pride / Gratification

The lexicons for both corpora are small but specific.  The central lexemes, pride  and orgulho  take the lion's share in both cases, 72,1%(E) and 50,4%(P), the second place going to the near-cognates vain  and vaidoso with 13,6%(E) and 17%(P).  The EC has a few other lexemes with arrogant, conceited, gratified  and puffed up, but the PC has a wider variety and the examples are more equitably distributed among altivo, arrogante, desvanecido, soberbo, úfano  and a few of enfatuado.     

Pride  and orgulho have both positive and negative connotations, the more positive ones being related to dignity and honour, the negative ones being either pride seen as unjustified, or as detrimental to the Christian ideal of humility. These emotions are disapproved of in both English and Portuguese cultures, and it is rarely acceptable to be overtly proud of one's own achievements, although a certain indulgence is granted, for example, to parents whose pride is projected into those of their children.

The central lexemes and the cognates are fairly similar in meaning, and have  mixed positive and negative connotations. Gratified  is probably the least negative in the EC, possibly because it is associated with the performance of others, as in the example given by Ortony et al. or those in the corpus.  It seems to indicate a mixture of Gratitude to someone for some action, mixed with Pride in oneself that the person should have felt it necessary to do this action.  Úfano would seem to have a similar connotation.  Altivo  has the more positive connotations of proud  and has a distinct connection to dignified.     The rest  all have largely negative connotations, but the choice of which to use, either in the mother tongue or for translation, is a question of taste rather than actual meaning. 

The main lexemes often combine with each other or other emotions in a way which indicates both the negative and positive senses of the words.  Thus pride  combines with shame, fear  and anger, and also with pleasure, joy  and passion.  The adjective proud  seems to favour adjectives describing the type of behaviour associated with this feeling, like fastidious, greedy and disdainful.  The more negative connotations of lexemes like arrogant and conceited  can be seen by the way in which they combine with other negative notions like patronizing, self-centred, loudmouthed  and cruel.

11.2.2 The semantics and syntax of Pride / Gratification

Phenomenon types

As can be seen in Table 11.1, there is almost an obligation within these lexemes to point to the Self as the PHENOMENON.  79,4%(E) and 67,7%(P) belong to PH. types 2-5, and a further 4,3%(E) and 12,9%(P) were type 10 which are often objects belonging to the Self.  A lot of examples can be seen as type 3, or referring to Pride in one's situation, social or economic, even if this is not specifically referred to.  In the PC, there are about 8,5%, which, despite the pointers inherent in the lexemes, have to take a type 1 interpretation, either because the emotion noun is plural and, therefore, the PHENOMENA are multiple, or the reference is to something unknown.

The few examples, 12,1%(E) and 4,6%(P), which take types 6-9, are nearer the Gratification scenario, most of them with pride  and orgulho,  as in:

(11.3) His pride in his son and in his son's possessions was continually  increasing and now he had something to show me. GG

An SFoc group

This group is very definitely a SFoc one, with only two examples of PFoc lexemes in the EC,  and a few ambivalent adjectives and nouns in the PC.  These examples in the PC tend to show the emotion as projected into some object connected to the SENSER, as in, o seu altivo chapéu , or as attributed to an inanimate object, as in altivas montanhas.  There are one or two verbs as well, of the rather ambiguous type which have a transitive usage, but are normally used with the -SE pronoun, like envaidecer  and enfatuar.

The SFoc adjective proud  accounts for 39,3% out of the total for adjectives and past participles, and orgulhoso accounts for 36,6%.   There is a fairly high number of attributive adjectives in both corpora, almost half of them tagged for behaviour, but the emphasis is on copulas + adjectives.  In the EC, be is used in most cases, but in the PC the zero copula is much less frequent than usual, only 52,2%,  and, although estar, ficar  and ser  account for 21,7% of the rest, a wide variety of copulas make up the remaining 26,1%.

Pride provides most of the 31,9% nouns in the EC, and the PC has 49,1% nouns. Both corpora show a preference for the middle type of noun, and both noun complementation  and the adverbial noun phrases are below average.  The SFoc verbs are few, and are of the -SE reflexive type in the PC, with orgulhar-se,  and one example of pride oneself  in the EC. 

11.2.3  A Linguistic profile of Pride/Gratification

Apart from gratification, the lexemes in the Pride group seem to map quite successfully on to the Pride or Gratification scenarios proposed by Ortony et al.  When one looks at the distribution of the PHENOMENON types, it is easy to understand the reasons for combining the two groups - examples of each group are covered by the same lexemes, and those which could be considered as Gratification, because they focus the achievements of Others, are very few.  Besides, Pride in other people and their achievements is usually partly due to the reflected glory the Self receives as a parent, relation or promoter of the person involved.  Simple pride, however, is well-defined both lexically and by the syntactic and semantic patterns it favours.

Although this is a strongly SFoc area, the SENSER's emotional state is most important, and the syntax matches the Self-orientated type of PHENOMENON described above. Complementation is possible, but as the PHENOMENON can be seen as some action by, or some object belonging to the SENSER, it is not often used.  The few verbs are nearly all overtly reflexive, whether they are classified as SFoc or PFoc, and there are very few clear-cut PFoc verbs or SFoc participles.  

This is not an immediate and transitory emotion designed to solve some problem in life, nor is it a mood with an undefinable PHENOMENON.  It is very often seen by the Speaker as an almost permanent attitude to life at an unconscious level, only becoming active when the SENSER's position is threatened.  In this sense, it could be seen as causing a form of action-readiness.  If the subsequent action is seen as related to honour  and dignity, the SENSER is evaluated positively, but if it is associated with unjustifiably aggressive behaviour, the evaluation is negative.  On other, more positive, occasions, pride and orgulho are seen as more temporary reactions to the SENSER's, or the SENSER's protegé's achievements, and then it can be seen as PHENOMENON-centred form of emotion close to Joy. 

11.3  The Self-Reproach / Remorse group

The combination of the Self-Reproach and Remorse groups was done for much the same reasons as with Pride / Gratification. Ortony et al. define these groups as [DISAPPROVING OF ONE'S OWN BLAMEWORTHY ACTION], and Remorse also entails [BEING DISPLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED UNDESIRABLE EVENT]. The variables are:

  1. the degree of judged blameworthiness

  2. the strength of the cognitive unit with actual agent

  3. deviations of the agent's action from person/role based expectations

  4. (for Remorse only)  the degree to which the event is undesirable

and the examples they give are:

(11.5)  (Self-Reproach) The spy was ashamed of having betrayed his country.

(11.6)  (Remorse) The spy felt remorse at the danger he had done in betraying his country.

Unlike the previous Pride / Gratification group, these groups do not have negative cultural connotations.   Since one is [DISAPPROVING OF ONE'S OWN BLAMEWORTHY ACTION] and, with Remorse, is also [DISPLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED UNDESIRABLE EVENT],  others can sympathise which such feelings.  They are, however, quantitively minor emotions, whose importance has changed over the centuries, and many would say that shame  and vergonha  are fast becoming devalued in modern society .

11.3.1  The lexicon of Self-Reproach / Remorse

In the EC, neither self-reproach  with 1,3% of the examples nor remorse  with 3,1% are popular lexemes.  The most popular lexeme here is sorry  with 35,7%, is often used in circumstances of apology, both sincere and merely polite.   Afraid (12,6%) and regret (11,3%) have a similar usage, and none of these lexemes are very strong in context, so that it is easy to point to examples which are nearer polite formulae than indicative of real emotion, as in I regret to inform you that your library book should have been returned three weeks ago.   Ashamed and shame  are  stronger lexemes and accounted for 22,9% of the EC group but otherwise, apart from guilt, with 9,5%, the other lexemes, contrite, mortify, penitent / repent,  and rue are  rarely used. 

The central PC lexeme, vergonha, is also the most popular, with 34,8%, which may indicate a greater preoccupation here with the stronger feeling expressed by shame  in the EC.  The lexemes in the PC which may have both sincere and more polite connotations of the sorry  and regret  type are lamentar (17,9%), arrepender (11,4%) and ter pena (8,1%).  Despite expectations to the contrary, pudor  is reasonably popular, with 7,1%, and so is the more central remorso, with 7,6%.  The other lexemes, amargar, atrição, contrição,mortificação, pejo, and pesar, however, produced few examples.  

Although lexemes like ashamed  do not seem to combine frequently with others, when they do it is with other negative emotion words, such as unhappy, afraid, or words in their own group like guiltyShame  combines with rather more examples but they are of a similar semantic type, like, despair, dismay  and fear,  or self-criticism, embarrassment  and guilt..

11.3.2  The semantics and syntax of Self-Reproach/Remorse

PHENOMENON types

This group complements the previous one in certain ways,  and it is essentially a Self-focused area, as can be seen in Table 11.2.  This is particularly evident in the EC where 75,8% of the examples are in the PH. type 2-5 band with a further 12,1% related to types 10-11  However, 11,8% of the examples describe an emotion like shame  in relation to some other person or their behaviour, usually insofar as it reflects on the SENSER's own personal prestige, as when Pip suffers from Joe's social awkwardness in front of Estella in Great Expectations:

(11.7)  I am afraid I was ashamed of the dear good fellow - I know I was ashamed of him - when I saw that Estella stood at the back of Miss Havisham's chair, and that her eyes laughed mischievously.  GE

The PC differs somewhat here, with only 55,8% being directly related to the Self in the type 2-5 band, 13,6%  being felt on behalf of the Other, and 19% being felt for types 10 and 11.  A further 9,9% are in the type 1 group because lexemes like pudor  and vergonha  seem to refer to multiple and ill-defined PHENOMENA. 

Largely SFoc group

The high proportion of SFoc adjectives in the EC are largely accounted for by afraid, sorry  and ashamed, three more of these predicative only adjectives which often seem to be translatable by a ter + noun structure in Portuguese, in this case, by ter  pena  and ter vergonha.  There are a high proportion of nouns and these ter structures in the PC, 25,2% of all the examples with nouns, but few PC SFoc adjectives.  The behaviour of the lexemes involved leads to very pronounced degree of uncountability in both corpora, but whereas the complementation of the noun is almost nil in the EC, it is high in the PC, nearly 25%.  For similar reasons, the adverbial noun phrases are low in the EC, about 10%, and high in the PC, over 20%.  

There are also 7,8%(P) SFoc verb + -SE examples,  with arrepender-se and 9,6% SFoc transitive examples with lamentar, which also translate the SFoc adjective structures in the EC. Although regret appears quite often as a SFoc verb, it is the only lexeme that really functions like this in the EC except for a few examples of repent

More PFoc items in PC

The most obvious difference between the EC and the PC here would seem to be the way the PFoc items are much rarer in the EC, 6,1%(E) as against 22,7%(P).  Most of the examples come from the PFoc adjectives shameful  and the PFoc use of the noun shame, as in It is a shame....  The PC shows 22,7% as being PFoc but this is partly affected by 8,3% of nouns which are ambivalent, and can act as either SFoc or PFoc, most of the É pena.... or É uma vergonha... type.  5,6% belong to the ambiguous -SE type verbs, most of them being envergonhar-se.

11.3.3  A Linguistic profile of Self-Reproach/Remorse

 The distinction between Self-Reproach and Remorse in Ortony et al.'s sense is not easy to make.  In a way one could say that pure Self-Reproach, in which one simply regrets having done something for no other reason than that it is wrong, is a highly moral feeling, and that it is more human for people to feel Ortony et al.'s Remorse, and wish they had not done something because of the consequences.   Psychological dishonesty, however, probably contributes to the fact that linguistic evidence seems to favour a Self-Reproach interpretation in most cases, despite the fact that the factor that could give a Remorse interpretation can often be detected at the level of the full context.   Examples with PH. type 11 are the most explicit ones of the Remorse situation, but they only occur with afraid  and sorry that  in the EC, and with lamentar  and vergonha in the PC.  The lexeme remorse and its cognate remorso  only occur with PH. type 5 and, although explicit about the importance of the SENSER's action, the examples do not elaborate on [BEING DISPLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED UNDESIRABLE EVENT].

One cannot ignore the semantics involved in the PFoc differences in the two corpora.   Although the extra examples in the PC can be partly explained by the ambiguity of the noun and -SE verb examples, both the syntax and the PHENOMENON types would seem to point to a greater tendency of the PC to focus on what causes the emotion, even if it is the SENSER.  The need to refer to it as pena  or vergonha  with 8% of the total examples, is considerably more than the 2,3% with shame.  However, even the PFoc examples in the PC are few, and it should not be forgotten that a total of 13,1%(P) of the PFoc and SFoc verbs are of the -SE reflexive variety and therefore automatically focus the SENSER, a situation to be found with only 2 examples of reproach oneself  in the EC. 

The predicative adjectives of the EC and the ter + noun and reflexive verbs of the PC, and the almost total absence of PFoc verbs and SFoc past participles,  focus the SENSER's state or internal emotional processes, whether these are seen as states of 'being' or 'possession', or self-caused processes.  The evidence for the PC, though, seems to point to that separation between the SENSER and the process which is only possible in Portuguese.

Unlike the more permanent interpretation of the Pride / Gratification emotions as underlying attitudes which are activated when necessary, these emotions are related to specific situations and instances.  They are essentially consciously processed and imply a degree of either active moral judgement, or passive cultural conditioning, according to one's viewpoint.   They cannot be considered as moods, and can only be assessed for action readiness if the context allows for some reparation to be made.  Although certain gestures or behaviour are associated with these emotions,  only about 4% of the examples are tagged for behaviour in both corpora which indicates that these emotions are consciously processed over time, and neither lead to nor need immediate physical expression.

11.4  The Appreciation group

The definition Ortony et al. give for this group is that of [APPROVING OF SOMEONE ELSE'S PRAISEWORTHY ACTION], and the variables are:

  1. the degree of judged praiseworthiness

  2. deviations of the agent's action from person/role based expectations (i.e. unexpectedness)

 and the example given is:

(11.8)  The physicist's colleagues admired him for his Nobel-prize winning work.

Although the only difference between Appreciation and Gratitude, which belongs to the Reactive Emotions  is that Gratitude also means one is [PLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED DESIRABLE EVENT], the examples for Gratitude, although few, fit quite neatly into their own group and will be considered separately.    Appreciation covers a fairly wide selection of lexemes and, although it may seem very close to Liking, the distinction is there.  One may admire or respect someone for doing something you approve of, without actually liking them - for example, many people admired Margaret Thatcher when she was Prime Minister, but not all of them liked her.  Similarly, if one is amused or fascinated by someone, it is probable than one likes or will like them, but not essential.  One could, in fact, debate the point of whether the Appreciation of someone or something precedes the process of liking them.

11.4.1  The lexicon of Appreciation

Although there are a large number of lexemes for each corpus, 30 for the EC and 25 for the PC,  9 of the EC lexemes account for 78,3% of the examples and 11 in the PC for 81,7%.   Enjoy (14,6%), admire (12,4%), please (10,1%), charm (9,2%), amuse (9%) and respect (8,2%) are the most numerous in the EC, with gozar (12,4%), respeitar (12,2%), encantar (11,3%),  and deliciar-se (7%) in the PC.   The lexemes can be divided into those which favour PFoc or SFoc verbs and, before any further analysis is made, this gives a roughly 40/60 ratio for the EC and 50/50 for the PC, the lexemes dividing up fairly equally between the types.  The SFoc lexemes, which lexemes divide roughly on a weak > strong basis and express degrees of approval go from   the more neutral approve  and appreciate, through the rather stronger admire, to esteem, respect, reverence and veneration.  The Portuguese cognates are similar in usage and content.  The PFoc ones cover most ways of causing Appreciation, from the weaker beguile  to the strong obsess, or from agradar  to maravilhar.   Apart from this division into SFoc and PFoc which favours a separation of the approval and causes of approval, one can distinguish a small but well-represented number of lexemes, particularly divertir-se and enjoy onself,  which are strongly connected with ideas of Joy.

There are a number of cognates in both languages in this area and most of the meanings match quite well, although they may vary in popularity, as is the case with the rarely used and rather old-fashioned divert  in the EC, compared with the popular divertir-se in the PC which often translates enjoy and amuseAdmire  and admirar  are similar but the English cognate does not usually contain the element of Surprise that carries over from a use of the same lexeme in situations which are more appropriately translated by surprise. Marvel at  is used as a SFoc verb, whereas maravilhar-se  can act in a PFoc fashion without the -SE.  Deliciar-se does not appear to have an immediate cognate, but its PFoc adjective delicioso  seems similar to delicious. However, unlike the English word, delicioso  is not restricted to the physical effects of tasting  food, and can be used to express opinions of experiences perceived by the other senses as well.  Similarly, whereas seduce  is not included in the EC, as the few examples found were restricted to morally reprehensible sexual conduct,  seduzir  has a wider and less pejorative application and was included in the PC.

Other lexemes without cognates are charm, which usually matches encantar, and please  and pleasing[1] are similar to agradar and agradável as  PFoc verb and adjective.   However, pleased, which is used frequently, and has been included in this section because it fits into Ortony et al.'s scenario, is actually less easy to translate systematically with other lexemes in this area.  I have often noticed having difficulty myself with conveying exactly what I mean by it in Portuguese, and usually have to resort to the resultative ficar contente  from the Joy group,  or to a stronger Liking interpretation with gostar [2].   I would attribute this partly to the fact that pleased  is on the rather porous frontier between these different emotions, but also to the fact that the other SFoc Portuguese participles are either too specific in meaning, like lisonjeado,  or too strong, like encantado, to serve as suitable translations.  It should also be noted that the rather neutral agradar, which is a good translation for the PFoc uses of please,  does not like to be SFoc.

The company kept by these lexemes would suggest that they like to keep each other company, but that they also like to be seen with positive emotions as well.  Occasionally one can find a contrasting situation with a negative emotion, and there are a few in which the accompanying word refers to the behaviour that is considered suitable.  Thus,  admiration  combined with several Liking words like affection, and also with amazement  and its synonyms[3], and negative notions like envy.    Appreciate  is less emotional and goes with understandEnjoy  focuses on activities that produce enjoyment, like  read  and laughRespect attracts several Liking lexemes, as well as the behaviour associated with it, like silence. Wonder  shows its connection with a slight element of Fear by appearing with awe.   On the PFoc side, amused  likes its co-lexemes in the group, but also appears with negative ideas like irritatedCharm, which is essentially PFoc, prefers to associate with beauty  and  enthusiasm  as well as love  and several others.  Fascinated  shows its slightly morbid side by combining with horrified, and pleased  combines with a fairly wide variety, including touched, happy, alarmed  and proud.

11.4.2  The semantics and syntax of Appreciation

PHENOMENON types

The distribution of PH. types shows that this emotion takes an exterior PHENOMENON in most cases, 81,3(E) and 87%(P) of all examples, as can be seen in Table 11.3.  11,4%(E) and 9,6%(P) show appreciation of types 2-5,  and an even smaller proportion  choose PH. type 1.

The tendency to identify an exterior PHENOMENON with lexemes like admire, appreciate, approve, charm, marvel, respect, revere, and wonder  in the EC, and admirar, agradar, apreciar, deslumbrar, estimar, lisonjear, respeitar, and seduzir  is almost total, over 90%. The lexemes which differ substantially are absorbed (39%), complacency (21%), enjoy (54%),  and pleased (63%) in the EC, and alento (45%), complacência (33%),  divertir-se (62%), gozar (78%) and prezar (46%). Some of these can be seen as lexically Self orientated, as with complacency; others, like  enjoy oneself  and divertir-se,  are overtly reflexive, referring to the SENSER's process of enjoyment rather than to the PHENOMENON; others refer to PH. types 3-5, and a few are of the rare type 2, referring to appreciation of oneself.

SFoc verbs and participles frequent

The ratio of SFoc/PFoc lexeme types does not necessarily mean that the different parts of those lexemes will necessarily favour one position or another.  Please,  for example, despite the PFoc qualities of the main verb form, prefers to appear as a SFoc participle.  However, the surprisingly similar overall SFoc/PFoc picture is less PFoc than the lexeme ratios of 60%/40%(E) and 50%/50%(P) for the emotion type would seem to suggest.

The SFoc verbs are considerably more numerous in this group than the average for all the groups, with 26,7%(E) and 24,5%(P).  The most popular ones in the EC are admire  and  enjoy (oneself) and gozar is the most numerous in the PC.  A small proportion of the verbs in the PC take the -SE pronoun, mostly with gozar  and deliciar

There are  few SFoc adjectives,  but the SFoc participles are quite numerous.  There are a few from nearly every example with an PFoc verb, but pleased  is by far the most numerous, with absorbed, amused, fascinated  and flattered  accounting for most of the rest.  In the PC they are more evenly distributed,  the most popular being absorvido, alentado, deslumbrado, divertido, encantado, fascinado, lisonjeado, maravilhado  and seduzido.  About 40% of these predicative participles take some form of complementation which identifies the PHENOMENON and, in the PC, the copula ficar  is unusually prominent.

The SFoc nouns are fewer than the overall average. In the EC, admiration and wonder are the most popular, with gozo and particularly respeito being popular in the PC.   Degrees of both obvious countability and non-countability are low, and the middle classification takes more than usual in both corpora.  Complementation of the noun was higher in the PC but lower in the EC, and prepositional adverbial clauses were a little above average in both corpora. 

PFoc adjectives and verbs frequent

The PFoc adjectives accounted for over half of all the PFoc examples in both corpora.  They focus the quality which merits appreciation and are most numerous with admirable, amusing, charming  and repectable, in the EC, and admirável, agradável, delicioso, encantador, maravilhoso  and respeitável, in the PC.  There are several PFoc verbs but the most numerous are absorb, amuse, fascinate, flatter  and please, in the EC, and absorver, agradar, cativar, deslumbrar, divertir-se, encantar, fascinar, maravilhar and seduzir in the PC.  The PFoc nouns are more restricted lexically. Charm  dominates in the EC, with other examples of enchantment  and the ambivalent wonder.  There are also several examples of spell which is rather marginal because of its association with magic  and because, being singular, its syntax is different from the usual emotion nouns.  However, spell-bound  and spell-binding  are more often used in typically emotional situations than a more obvious candidate for the lexicon of this group like fascinateEncanto  accounts for the over two thirds of the examples of PFoc nouns in the PC, and must be translated by a wider variety of English Appreciation lexemes than its apparent cognate enchantmentDelícia, divertimento, respeito  and sedução make up most of the remaining examples.

11.4.3  A Linguistic profile of Appreciation

Although apparently less basic than the affective emotions that promote reproduction and the family structure, there is no doubt that these emotions have served an evolutionary purpose in the establishment and maintenance of social and even religious structures.  The complex cognitive processes which lead to them not only involve certain aspects of natural selection, but also a lifetime of social conditioning, and there is a strong link between these lexemes and those of the Liking group, both syntactically and semantically.

The PHENOMENON is usually identified quite clearly, but the diversity of the lexicon and its accompanying syntax tends to allow for differences of focus. This group naturally favours the SFoc form with nouns and verbs and focuses the relationship between SENSER and PHENOMENON.  However, when there is a need for these lexemes to sometimes focus the PHENOMENON, this is done by the PFoc adjectives nearly all of which use the -ABLE or -ÁVEL suffix which tends to convey the notion of [WORTHY OF BEING]  admired  etc.

The PFoc group of lexemes, like charm  and flatter,  focuses on the qualities of the usually explicit PHENOMENON.  They naturally tend to appear as PFoc verbs, or adjectives with the -ING suffix which are on the gradient between the Progressive form of the PFoc verb and the adjective proper.  The Portuguese adjectives in this field use the NTE suffix, as with cativante and fascinante, but also have encantador, delicioso and maravilhoso.  The EC adjectives therefore sometimes provide for a rather more dynamic scenario than the PC ones, despite the fact that the Progressive aspect is rarely used with this emotion group.   

The more ambivalent nouns, like wonder  and marvel, which focus the SENSER's appraisal, produce PFoc adjectives like wonderful  and marvellous. The sub-group which is closely related to the Joy group, but which has both PFoc and SFoc lexemes, is less preoccupied with the PHENOMENON, and more interested in the SENSER.  Most of the PH. types 1-5 occur with amusement, enjoy, pleased, divertir  and gozar

11. 5 The Reproach group

This emotion group is defined by Ortony et al. as [DISAPPROVING OF SOMEONE ELSE´S BLAMEWORTHY ACTION], and the variables are:

  1. the degree of judged blameworthiness

  2. deviations of the agent's action from person/role based expectations (i.e. unexpectedness).

The example they use is:

            (11.9) Many people despised the spy for having betrayed his country

Ortony et al. chose the word reproach  to represent this group, probably to balance the group they call Self-Reproach.  However, I would prefer the more central and more popular contempt.  This group  can be seen as  antonymic to the previous one, although the fact that it is a small group leads one to wonder why this is so, if negative emotions are more frequently reported than positive ones.  One can only suggest that lack of the weaker forms of Appreciation is possibly simply absence of emotion, and lack of the stronger forms probably produces stronger emotions which may fall into this group, or quite probably develop into the emotions in the Distress, Fear or Dislike groups.

11.5.1  The lexicon of the Reproach group

 The lexicon for this group would seem to be richer for the EC than the PC, with 8 possibilities in the EC and only 3 in the PC.   The EC also produced a larger proportion of examples, 2,1% of all examples in the EC and only 1,2% of the PC.  The main lexemes in the EC were contempt (31,3%), despise (17,4%), scorn (15,9%), and reproach (12,9%) with deplore, disapprove and disdain registering between 6,5% and 9%.  The lack of lexemes and examples in the PC was probably due to the fact that, being a small area, only a larger corpus could do it justice.  These are lexemes which appear in very specific situations and if those situations fail to appear in the texts used, the examples will not be forthcoming. For example, deplorar  was not recorded, except as 2 doubtful examples of deplorável.  The words that did occur were desdém (42,4%), desprezo  (44,4%), and escárnio (13,2%).

Disdain  and desdém would seem to be cognates, but the Portuguese word is much more popular and functions as noun, adjective and verb, whereas disdain  is less popular and  uses its noun form almost exclusively.  Most of the examples are tagged for behaviour and the facial expression associated with it is usually a deliberate expression of disapproval.  Despise  functions only as a SFoc verb and an PFoc adjective,  but its near-cognate, desprezar, can be found in all forms.  Unlike desprezar though, despise  refers to the internal process and is not associated with behaviour.   Scorn  and escárnio have a certain amount in common, both lexically and syntactically, and both can be expressed through facial expression or speech.  Contempt  is a marginally stronger lexeme and is associated with more abrupt and expressive body language.  It can be translated by any of the Portuguese lexemes, according to context, syntax and personal taste.  Reproach, which Ortony et al. chose as a label for this group, can function  with the SFoc adjective and noun forms to express feeling, but the tendency of these forms to express behaviour, and of the verb form to refer to action rather than emotion, as in:

(11.10) I'm not going to reproach you,' she said. 'God knows it's not for me to reproach anyone. Any failure in my children is my failure.  BH

makes this lexeme a doubtful element in this group. 

Of these lexemes, only contempt  shows a tendency to keep the company of other words.  It likes its own synonyms, but seems to prefer strong forms of neighbouring negative emotions like loathing and fury  or the type of behaviour associated with it, like condescension [4] and ridicule

11.5.2  The semantics and syntax of the Reproach group

PHENOMENON types

Given the scenario for this emotion, it is not surprising that most of the PH. types should be in the 6-10 band, 94,1%(E) and 98,6%(P), and that  85%(E) and 77,1%(P) should belong to the Other orientated  6-9 band, as can be seen in Table 11.4.  The few exceptions to this rule are the type 1 examples with contempt  or desdém, and a few type 2 examples with contempt.

SFoc nouns, adjectives and verbs

Although the lexical profile of this group differed in the two corpora, the syntactic patterns were quite remarkably similar.   The SFoc/PFoc ratios were very similar, and both had a remarkably high number of examples tagged for BEHAVIOUR.  The most salient SFoc items are the nouns.  The group favours non-countability, but, although the complementation of the nouns and the adverbial noun phrases, describing behaviour, is high in the EC,  only complementation is higher in the PC.  The  SFoc adjectives, most also tagged for behaviour, is another noticeable feature of both corpora.  The SFoc verbs are also important  and  they are nearly all normal transitives, except for overtly reflexive examples with despise, desprezar, and one of Aquilino Ribeiro's more tortuous constructions with desdenhar-se:

(11.11)  O Malhadinhas, longo monólogo, tendo em vista o seu alçado, é menos um registo do som que um registo psicológico. Tanto assim que se desdenhou da corruptela prosódica, fonte abundante e fácil de pitoresco. AQ

PFoc adjectives and past participles

The PFoc examples in both corpora are adjectives and past participles, with a couple of adverbs in the EC.   The adjectives were contemptible, deplorable, and despicable, and desprezível, which all use the -ABLE and -ÁVEL suffixes which imply [DESERVING OF BEING] despised  etc.   The interesting point is that there should be such a relatively high number of PFoc past participles in this group.  However, being despised or ser desprezado would seem to be a social state which favours multiple SENSERS.

11.5.3  A Linguistic profile of Reproach

As with Appreciation, this is an emotion which is generated by social reasons.  If questioned, the SENSER, even if only his/her behaviour has been described, would probably be able to explain exactly why he feels contempt.   The strong tendency to refer to behaviour has favoured the high level of SFoc adjectives and nouns, as well as that of adverbs in the EC.   However, despite the focus on behaviour, there is still a higher than average use of SFoc verbs which reflect a conscious appraisal and identification of the SENSER's sentiments.

11.6  The Gratitude group

This is a small group which Ortony et al. define as [APPROVING OF SOMEONE ELSE'S PRAISEWORTHY ACTION AND BEING PLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED DESIRABLE EVENT].  The variables which affect the emotion are:

  1. the degree of judged praiseworthiness

  2. deviations of the agent's action from person/role based expectations

  3. the degree to which the event is desirable

and the example they give is:

(11.12)  The woman was grateful to the stranger for saving the life of her child.

11.6.1  The lexicon of Gratitude

Although small, this group is well-defined, with 2 lexemes, grateful and thankful,  in the EC, and 3, agradecido, grato  and reconhecido, in the EC.  Grateful  and grato have related nouns, gratitude  and gratidão,  but no verbs are associated with them.  However, with thankful, the verb thank and the noun thanks  are used to describe the action taken when one is thankful, and are not in themselves related to the emotion.  The noun form which matches thankful  is thankfulness.   The morphology of the English lexemes take the suffix -FUL which does not have an equivalent in Portuguese, although the expression cheio de + noun  conveys a similar idea and was recorded for the corpus examples when it appeared.

 The way the lexemes are realized morphologically differ, and there is also a certain divorce between the participles agradecido and reconhecido, and the verbs associated with them.   Agradecer  refers to the action resulting from emotion, and reconhecer can refer both to this action and to the mental process preceding the whole situation because it also covers the meaning of recognise, but neither of them refer to the emotion. Therefore, agradecido and reconhecido appear to be past participles that have acquired a more specialized meaning. The nouns  agradecimento  and reconhecimento fulfil a rather more ambiguous function between the action and the emotion, and one not only does something em agradecimento de qualquer coisa, but one can feel cheio de agradecimento.

Unlike the other emotions in this section, there is little overlapping between Gratitude and other emotions, except, perhaps, and by association, with Joy.  In the BC, thankful  did not accept combination with any other lexeme, but grateful  appeared with a few words like happy  and sincere.

Grateful  is the more central of the two lexemes involved and it is certainly the most popular, with 87,8% of the examples.  Grato, too, is the most numerous, with 55,4%, agradecido  coming in second place with 28,9%.  However, this does not make grateful  and grato  equivalent, for reasons which will be discussed below.  In fact, in daily conversation, one would probably hear either of the other two Portuguese lexemes more frequently.

11.6.2  The semantics and syntax of Gratitude

PHENOMENON types

As can be seen in Table 11.5, there are no PH. type 1 examples in this group because the PHENOMENON is always expressed in the context.  A predictably high number are in the type 6-9 band, 83%(E) and 82%(P), and a further 7,3%(E) and 7,2%(P) belong to types 10-11.  The few examples in the types 2-5 band are from thankful  and grato.

This emotion is clearly dependent on the Other's [PRAISEWORTHY ACTION] but the corpora differ in that the EC is 95% SFoc but the PC is only 77,1% so.  There is also a difference in the way behaviour is associated with this emotion - the EC only has 8,5% of the examples tagged for BEHAVIOUR, the PC 21,7%. 

SFoc items predominant

The four PFoc examples in the EC are attributive uses of grateful with objects into which the emotion has been projected. In the PC the situation is similar with grato, used both attributively and predicatively, but with the same function.  Both grateful  and grato  also function as SFoc adjectives, the only difference being that this use of grateful  is ten times more frequent than the PFoc one, whereas grato  functions both ways with almost equal frequency. Thankful, however, is only SFoc. Despite the lack of an exactly  corresponding SFoc verb, agradecido and reconhecido  were classified as past participles, although they are arguably close to being adjectives, and appear both attributively and predicatively.   In all cases, however, there is a high level of  complementation identifying the PHENOMENON.  It should also be noted that the zero copula is rare, particularly for the PC.

In the EC nearly all the SFoc nouns are with gratitude, including two examples of nominals.  All three of the PC lexemes have several examples of the SFoc noun.  Complementation of the nouns is low and countability is non-existent in the EC and rare in the PC.   The EC also has 4 examples of the adverb gratefully.

11.6.3  A Linguistic profile of Gratitude

This group demonstrates a nice balance between the active recognition of the usually exterior PHENOMENON, and the focus on the SENSER.  The SFoc noun often refers to BEHAVIOUR but also  to the emotion itself as a sort of relation between SENSER and PHENOMENON.  The usually predicative adjectival / participle construction is the most explicit, and refers to the SENSER's consciously recognized emotional state, while referring to the PHENOMENON in the complementation.  If one remembers that this emotional state can subsequently be followed by the appropriate social action expressed by thank  or agradecer,  it is easy to see the emotion as a sort of action readiness which precedes it.    

11.7   The Anger group

This fairly large group is defined by Ortony et al. as [DISAPPROVING OF SOMONE ELSE'S BLAMEWORTHY ACTION AND BEING DISPLEASED ABOUT THE RELATED UNDESIRABLE EVENT], the variables are:

  1. the degreee of judged blameworthiness

  2. deviations of the agent's action from person/role based expectations

  3. the degree to which the event is undesirable

and the example they give is:

(11.13)  The woman was angry with her husband for forgetting to buy the groceries.

Anger is an important emotion, both qualitatively and quantitatively, for much the same reasons as Fear is.  It is generally recognized by all theorists, because it is observable in physical behaviour and measurable in terms of blood pressure and other internal reactions, and because it has the evolutionary function of preparing the person to take action against whatever is seen as undesirable. 

11.7.1  The lexicon of Anger

The lexicon for Anger is quite large, with 46 lexemes in the EC and 44 for the PC.   Anger  takes the biggest proportion of either corpora with 16,9% of the EC examples, and impatient comes in second place with 9,8%.   After that come 7 lexemes with 4 > 7% (annoyed, bad temper, bitter, furious, indignant, irate, irritated  and tired of ), 2 lexemes with 2 > 4%, another 7 with 1 > 2 % and 22 with under 1%, or only 7,6% of the total. The most important lexeme in the PC is furioso  with 8,6%, followed by impaciente with 7,2%, 4 lexemes with 4 > 7% (amargurar-se, cólera, fartar-se  and ofender-se ), 13 with 2 > 4%, 7 with 1 > 2% and 15 with under 1%, or only 8,5% of the total.  This means that, although the EC boasts a slightly higher number of lexemes, it only uses 11 of them more than 2% of the time, whereas the PC uses 18 in this way, which shows that, as in other groups, the PC actively uses a wider variety of lexemes than the EC.

Separating the lexemes on a 1 > 3 weak to strong basis proved rather difficult because the meaning of quite a few lexemes will depend a lot on the situation in which the lexeme is found, and on questions of taste and personal usage.   Elements such as an intensifier like 'very', or certain types of emphatic intonation in context, would be enough to promote a particular example of a lexeme to a higher group, so the information in Table 11.6  is very relative.  The strongest lexemes were the easiest to allocate, however,  and it is here again that the PC had the greater proportion of examples.

 Translation of these lexemes is not always easy, as differing cultural situations and personal tastes tend to influence decisions a lot. For example, when comparing two different Portuguese translations of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland,  I found that the original angry  was translated systematically by one translator as furioso, and by the other as irritado.   An English speaker may exclaim and express a weaker or stronger level of Anger by saying How irritating / annoying / infuriating!  but the choice of adjective will be influenced not just by the degree of emotion felt.  Infuriating, when used by a normally calm man will be strong, but it will lose some of its force when used by the type of middle-class woman who tends to use exaggerated language in relatively trivial circumstances.  Some of the lexemes are rarely used precisely because they are restricted by connotation to certain types of people.  For example, whereas as irritable  is fairly neutral situationally, fractious  tends to be used with small children, irascible with older men, and testy  of older people, particularly men.

The most interesting difference, however, was not related to the weak > strong groups but to the further division of the lexemes into three more syntactically differentiated groups:  those that included a PFoc verb, those that included a SFoc verb, and those which were restricted to adjectives and/or nouns.  The number of those with PFoc verbs and those with SFoc verb types were decidedly higher in the PC, the former being 71,1%(P) against 59,3%(E) and the latter 8,2%(P) against only 3,1%(E).    The EC had far more adjective / noun lexemes, 37%(E) against 20,1%(P).

The different forms of the lexemes in the two corpora also helps to complicate matters.  Some of the more popular cognates match reasonably well, such as irritate / irritar, offend / ofender, and impatient / impaciente, but other apparent cognates like indignant  and indignar  will cause syntactic problems because the former is only used as an adjective / noun pair, and the latter as a verb / noun pair.  Others vary as to popularity - exasperate  is relatively common in the EC, but exasperar  is rare in the PC.   In any case, several factors have to be taken into consideration in translation, and Table 11.6 can only help to indicate different levels of emotional strength and relative popularity.

In the BC, Anger lexemes liked keeping frequent company with a wide variety of other words, including members of their group, a large number of negative emotions from the Fear, Distress, and Dislike groups, and the occasional contrasting emotion, such as amusement  and pride.  This was true of angry, and annoyance  was found with a few examples of negative emotions, and also some of Surprise, and  exasperated  occurred with its synonyms and Distress lexemes.  Irritation was found with its synonyms, but otherwise preferred the weak to moderate examples of the negative emotions, and words describing associated reasons for the emotion, like surprised, confused, sleepy, fatigue, and contrasting emotions like amusedOutraged  and impatient  appeared largely with synoynms, and indignant  often paired with Surprise and Fear words. 

11.7.2  The semantics and syntax of Anger

The PHENOMENON types and Anger

The data on the PH. types are surprisingly similar, as can be seen in Table 11.7. The overall percentages for the group show a fairly high proportion taking type 1, 8,3%(E) and 13,2% for types 2-5, and 67,2%(E) and 64,4%(P) for types 6-11.   The main difference emerges from a more detailed breakdown which shows that the EC favours types 6-9, with 60,9%, with only 6,3% for 10-11, whereas, in the PC, types 6-9 account for only 51%, and types 10-11 for  13,4%.

The different lexemes vary considerably in their choice of PH. types.  In the EC, type 1 appears with several, but is only noticeably high with bitter (32%),  sulk (78%), sullen (100%), and temper (94%).  A few examples of the type 2-5 band appears with most lexemes, but none of them show a significantly high level except tired of (30%).  There are several lexemes, however, which show high percentages in the 6-10 band, especially anger (79,4%), annoy (88%), exasperate (85%), fury (72,5%), impatient (79%), indignant (98%), offend (96%), outrage (100%),  rage (72%), sick of (77%), and vex (100%).

 In the PC, the only lexemes which show an above average number of type 1 are amuar (69%), azedo (44%), impaciente (42%), rancor (33%), raiva (31%) and revolta (48%).    As with the EC, several lexemes took a few of types 2-5, but only contrariado (20%),  fartar-se (67%), and incomodar-se (39%) were noticeably higher than the average.  Several lexemes showed high levels in the type 6-11 band, in particular, afrontar (100%), chatear (100%), cólera (90%), desagradar (87%), despeito (88%), indignar (91%), maçar (75%), ofender (100%), vexar (84%) and zangar (91%).

SFoc / PFoc differences and ambivalence

This is one area in which the corpora differ quite considerably syntactically.  First,  the SFoc/PFoc ratio is different,  and then, although the BEHAVIOUR tagged examples are high for both corpora,  it is more so for the EC.   If one considers the  differences in lexeme types described above, this is to be expected.  There are a few lexemes which show the SFoc/PFoc ambivalence, already found for other groups like Joy.  The examples were found largely with the adjectives bitter, morose, amargo, azedo  and rancoroso, and the nouns annoyance, bitterness, amargura, contrariedade  and enfado, with the SFoc ones accounting for between a half and two thirds of each lexical form.

SFoc lexemes - differences between corpora

The division of SFoc lexemes shows some differences between the corpora, as can be seen in Table 11.7.  The SFoc adjectives in the EC are largely represented by angry (about 30%), with bitter, cross, furious, hot, impatient, indignant, irritable, sick of, sulky  and sullen  taking 4-8% each.  In the PC, farto, furioso  and impaciente account for 75% of the examples, the only other adjectives of any significance being amargo and azedo.  The most frequent SFoc past participles are annoyed, exasperated, offended  and tired of, with a few for irritated.    In the PC, though, the participles are well-distributed among all the relevant lexemes, the most popular being amuado, contrariado, enfastiado, indignado, irritado  and vexado.  The copulas with adjectives and participles in the EC include 11 examples of the resultative become  and get, about a quarter of the total for the whole corpus.  The number of zero copulas in the PC is  a little lower, with  estar  appearing more frequently than usual but ficar  less so, although an unusual variety of copula type verbs appear relatively frequently with the SFoc past participles.  

The SFoc nouns in the EC appear with several lexemes, but especially with bad temper (23%), anger(18%), and indignation, rage, impatience and irritation, (7-9% each).  In the PC the main nouns are cólera (16,5%), fúria (10,6%), impaciencia (8%), rancor, raiva, despeito  and amargura (6-7% each), and azedume, enfado, contrariedade, ira  and revolta (2-5% each).  Countability in both corpora is down by 3,8%(E) and 6,2%(P), and complementation of the noun is lower by about 10% in both corpora.  However the use of nouns in adverbial phrases is a little above average in both cases, reflecting the high BEHAVIOUR levels for this group.

High proportion of SFoc adverbs

The BEHAVIOUR element is also important in explaining the outstanding difference with  the SFoc adverbs, with the EC reaching the very high level of 17,9%(E), or nearly 30% of the total SFoc adverbs in the corpus. The SFoc adverbs in the EC are largely accounted for by impatiently (30%), angrily (20%), indignantly (13%) and  bitterly (11%).  Although such adverbs are rare in the PC,  furiosamente  and amargamente  are relatively frequent. 

Few SFoc verbs

The tiny number of SFoc verbs in the EC are represented by sulk, but the PC offers us amuar, arrenegar, embezerrar and embirrar, and the interesting, but ambivalent verb aborrecer.  Apart from one very unusual example of aborrecer +  QUE clause, Ela aborrecia que lhe escrevessem postais, fosse até a mais banal das recomendações., though, the examples are all either intransitive or take prepositional complements.

PFoc examples

Apart from the ambivalent adjectives discussed above, the PFoc adjectives tend to be of the type that are formed with -ING, as with annoying  and exasperating, in the EC, and with -ÁVEL, as in desagradável, or -IVO, as in ofensivo, in the PC.

Some of the PFoc nouns are also of the ambivalent kind, and the few remaining ones in the EC are affront, goad, offence  and outrage. The PC examples, afronta, chatice, incómodo, maçada, ofensa, ultraje  and vexame. are more numerous.   There are few PFoc verbs in the EC, and these are largely  annoy, irritate  and offend..  The PC ones are aborrecer, azedar, desagradar, enfurecer, fartar, impacientar, incomodar, indignar, irritar  and ofender,  and about 40% of these verb forms are used with the reflexive -SE.

11.7.3  A Linguistic profile of Anger

This is an interesting group to analyse because of the differences that arise.  One of the most significant points, however, is that there seems to be considerable agreement between the corpora over PHENOMENON types as this shows that, whatever the options offered by the lexicon and its associated syntax, there must be some underlying common psychological factor as to the reasons for the Anger emotion. 

One might have expected that Anger has to be directed at something, but the PH. type analysis shows that a high proportion are of type 1.  This is because certain lexemes, like bitter, sulk. sullen and bad temper, would seem to be due to multiple and unspecified phenomena rather than one specific one.  The same can be said of  amuar, azedo  and impaciente, as well as rancor, raiva and revolta, which seem to translate EC lexemes like anger, fury, rancour and rage, but are less Phenomenon, and more Senser focused than the EC lexemes. However, as with other groups, the stronger the lexeme, the more likely it is that a PHENOMENON will be clearly identified. 

There is also an obvious connection between the PFoc verbs and clear identification of the PHENOMENON.  Although the verbs are not always used in the PFoc or SFoc way one might predict by examining only  their basic forms, the higher number of PC verbs and participles meant the EC contained nearly 20% more SFoc lexemes than the PC.   The use of verbs, of either type, would seem to focus both participants and the relationship between them.  This is true of the normal transitive PFoc verbs and the examples in the EC are quite straightforward in this way, and are evident also in a slightly higher number of SFoc participles.  The only SFoc verbs, sulk and rage, are typically intransitive and refer as much to a form of behaviour as to the emotional process behind it.  This is echoed in the PC where those verbs classified as SFoc are either intransitive or, in the case of zangar-se, take the -SE particle.   The interesting point is that 40% of those verbs which can be classified as PFoc actually appear with the -SE particle, and to distinguish between these examples and the so-called SFoc ones with -SE is often rather hair-splitting, since both can and do appear either with no further complementation, or with a prepositional object, as in aborreceu-se (com X) and zangou-se (com X).  The intransitive and reflexive-type behaviour of these verbs, therefore, would seem to point to an interest in the SENSER's emotional processes or behaviour, and only less immediately in the PHENOMENON.

The copula + adjective/past participle forms show that there is a considerable amount of interest in the SENSER's state and emotional processes, particularly in the EC.  The EC has a relatively higher number of resultative copulas than the PC, but the PC has a high number of both the estar  and other copula-type verbs.  Since the PC has so many -SE type verbs describing the becoming angry  process, these probably absorb the need for resultative or ficar   copulas. The low percentage of complementation also indicates less interest in the PHENOMENON in these examples.

The frequent use of nouns in this group is also a sign of focus on the emotional process, and the low level of countability and lack of complementation confirm the more general tendency.  The frequent appearance of nouns in adverbial phrases indicates interest in the associated behaviour. The large number of -LY adverbs in the EC partly fulfil the same function as the adverbial noun phrase, more common in the PC. 

The overall linguistic picture of the Anger group confirms it as a more central emotion.   It focuses on internal emotional processes and on external behaviour but, at the same times allows for the identification of the PHENOMENON, which must be psychologically acknowledged, particularly with the stronger and more central lexemes.


 

[1]  The different forms of the verb please are classified in this group, but the noun pleasure and its corresponding adjective pleasant  were classified as a separate lexeme in the Joy group.   The difference is not always easy to justify, but it would seem to be more suitable to leave pleasure / pleasant  with its simple scenario, in Joy, and to include the verb please, with its implicit cause - effect relationship  in this section, where the psychological scenario is more complex and explicit than it is in Joy. 

[2]  Ficar  acts here as a resultative copula and contente  is similar to content   or happyGostar   means like.

[3]  Perhaps this juxtaposition of amazement and astonishment is the one way in which the admire + surprise  mixture in the Portguese admirar, can come through in English.

[4]  Condescend is a false friend to the Portuguese condescender.  Although they share the element of the Subject of the verb being superior hierarchically to the Others involved, this action is seen to more positive, unlike the English cognate which implies a strong element of arrogance.