Similar studies

Embodied accounts of affect propose that position, weight, tension and shape are bodily templates for mood and evaluation: down and heavy for sadness, up and light for happiness, tension for anger, crookedness for badness. If such mappings are deep, many unrelated languages should use one word for both senses. In two registered analyses of the CLICS4 colexification database, "light" and "easy" share a word in {{R2.pairs.LIGHT (WEIGHT)|EASY.families_colexifying}} of {{R2.pairs.LIGHT (WEIGHT)|EASY.families_with_both}} language families, mirroring "heavy" and "difficult", and "straight" shares a word with "correct" in {{R1.pairs.STRAIGHT|CORRECT (RIGHT).families_colexifying}} families. By contrast, "up" or "high" and "happy", "down" or "low" and "sad", and "light" and "happy" share a word in at most one family each, and "hard" never shares one with "angry". Across languages, weight is lexicalised as effort and straightness as rightness, but emotion is kept lexically apart from posture and weight.

• Published, Reproduced, Reviewed.Published, Reproduced, Reviewed: In CLICS4 v1.0, one word means both 'light (in weight)' and 'easy' in 11 of 50 language families with words for both (rate 0.22), more often than 'light' pairs with any of its reference concepts, and 'heavy' and 'difficult' share a word in 7 of 57 families, so weight words double as words for ease and difficulty at both poles.
• Published, Reproduced.Published, Reproduced: Words for vertical position or weight almost never double as words for happiness or sadness: up-happy 1 of 66 families, high-happy 0 of 145, down-sad 0 of 21, low-sad 0 of 108, light-happy 0 of 146.
• Published, Reproduced, Reviewed.Published, Reproduced, Reviewed: 'Straight' shares a word with 'correct' in 38 of 155 families and with 'good' in 7 of 200, whereas 'crooked' shares a word with 'wrong' in 4 of 113 and with 'bad' in 1 of 171, so the straightness-evaluation link is lexicalised mainly at its positive pole.

1 more claim

Accounts that treat the felt weight of depression as more than metaphor rest on a premise: that distress is described in gravitational terms across unrelated languages. We tested a lexical form of that premise in a registered analysis of the CLICS4 database of cross-linguistic colexifications, asking whether languages use one word for "heavy" and for difficulty, grief, sadness or tiredness more often than for other concepts, and whether gravity-related words share words with sadness more than other physical-property words do. "Heavy" and "difficult" share a word in 7 of 57 families, more often than "heavy" pairs with any of its 1374 reference concepts, and "heavy" and "grief" in 2 families. "Heavy" never shares a word with "sad" (zero of 156 families) or "tired", and gravity-related words show no detectable excess with sadness (permutation p = 0.2232). Lexically, weight is widely the word for burden, not for sadness.

• Published, Reproduced, Reviewed.Published, Reproduced, Reviewed: In CLICS4 v1.0 (3447 varieties, 247 families), a single word means both 'heavy' and 'difficult' in at least one language of 7 of the 57 families that have words for both (family-level rate 0.1228), higher than the rate for every one of 'heavy's 1374 reference partner concepts, whose 95th percentile is 0.0051; 'heavy' and 'grief' share a word in 2 of 69 families (rate 0.029, percentile 0.9964).
• Published, Reproduced, Reviewed.Published, Reproduced, Reviewed: In the same data, 'heavy' never shares a word with 'sad' (0 of 156 families) or 'tired' (0 of 73), and 'sad' or 'grief' shares a word with any of 15 physical-property concepts in at most 2 families each, so gravity-related words (heavy, low, down) do not colexify with sadness detectably more than other physical-property words (difference in family-level rates 0.0031, one-sided permutation p = 0.2232).