Weighting Assessment of the Effect of Chinese State-Changing Words on Emotions

Past studies of sentiment analysis have mainly applied algorithms based on vocabulary categories and emotional characteristics to detect the emotionality of text. However, the collocation of state-changing words and emotional vocabulary affects emotions. For example, adverbs of degree strengthen emotions, and negative adverbs reverse emotions. This study investigated the weighted effect of state-changing words on emotion. The research material comprised 73 state-changing words that were collocated with four emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, and anger. A total of 84 participants participated in the vocabulary assessment. The results revealed that state-changing words could be classified into four types: intensifying, weakening, neutralizing, and reversing. In a comparison of the weighting factors among emotions, the weighting effect of the same state-changing word in the positive emotion category was particularly evident. The results could serve as a reference for follow-up studies on detecting emotions in text.