Aristophanes - Week 2

[bailsy6]

In week 2 I continued to read Wasps and assigned sentiments for sentences starting at line 207. A lot of time has been spent getting more familiar with the context, and Alan Sommerstein's commentary of this play has proven to be very useful. I have noticed that certain verbs seem to carry some sentiment. I see several cases where instead of using a verb that has a neutral meaning, Aristophanes opted for a verb that has some sort of meaning other than the direct definition, and this often impacts the sentence's sentiment. In one sentence, he uses μυσπολέω (translated as "ferreting" or "run about like a mouse"), while in another, he uses φεύγω ("flee, take flight") to accomplish different tasks. He could have used a neutral-seeming verb instead, which leads me to believe that the choice was deliberate in order to contribute to the sentiment. I may be misinterpreting this, but it has given me some difficulty. Should I continue to not add verbs to the sentiment lexicon tabs, or are there some cases where it is helpful to include?

[ChiaraPalladino]

Can you point me to some specific examples?

In general, it's very important to reason at the lexical level for each sentence - how many words point towards a specific emotion? If the verb only contributes to them, we may discuss strategies to add a few of them (it could be interesting).

[bailsy6]

Sentence 3 - δημηγορέω (to deliver a public oration) 6 - μυσπολέω 9 - φυλάσσω (guard) 11 - κλαίω (cry) 14 - κράζω (croak, bawl) 18 - κεντέω (prick) 19 - δάκνω (bite) 33 - ἐμπίπλημι (fill quite full) 35 - κατακλαίω (bewail loudly) In sentence 20, βαδίζω (walk) is used negatively, although it is primarily the preceding parts of the sentence that causes this, not the verb itself. I include this as a contrast to the other verbs, which seem to hold the negative sentiment on their own. So if we were to add verbs into the mix as solo contributors to sentiment, I would just need to take extra care that the verb itself carries the connotation, not the context. When the word "not" is added in front of a verb, it would probably cause the sentence to have a different sentiment than the verb itself, so this is another time when context would be important (I don't have a specific example of this, I am just thinking out loud).

[ChiaraPalladino]

Good job @bailsy6 , here is my answer. In short, it would be a good idea to include verbs that have a strong sentiment component, such as κλαίω and κατακλαίω. I have also checked the dictionary and these two have a clear negative sentiment which is not dependent on context.

However, the rest of the verbs are strongly dependent on context and are closer to the example of βαδίζω, so I would be very careful at including them or considering them as components in the sentiment of the sentence. Also, your observation about the negatives is correct, sometimes the presence of "not" will subvert the sentiment of a verb or noun. If we encounter such cases, we will need to discuss how to approach them at the lexical level.

This is something that we should add to the guidelines. Something like: "what verbs to consider to assign a sentiment score".