Revisiting Semantic Prosody of Cause―A Sentiment Analysis ―

Abstract

This study examines the semantic prosody of the verb “cause” through a comprehensive corpus-based sentiment analysis, challenging the traditional association with negative sentiment. By integrating co-varying collexeme analysis with sentiment analysis, we demonstrate a significant prevalence of neutrality in the sentiment scores for constructions involving the verb “cause”. Our findings question the assumed negative semantic prosody of “cause”, revealing a nuanced sentiment landscape where neutral expressions predominate. This research contributes to linguistic, philosophical, and data science fields by offering new insights into the complex interplay between language, cognition, and emotion, and suggests avenues for future research into the emotional valence of linguistic expressions.