Analysing lexical profiles of Turkish sadness verbs and metaphorical profile of sadness concept in Folk Songs: A corpus-driven Approach

This thesis aims to analyse the lexical profiles of five Turkish sadness-related verbs—üzül-, hüzünlen-, dertlen-, kederlen-, and tasalan—by examining their collocations, colligations, semantic preferences, and prosodies within the Turkish National Corpus (TNC) through the "extended lexical units model." By identifying the nuanced distinctions among these verbs, this study reveals how each one encapsulates unique aspects of sadness, aligning them with cognitive evaluation patterns in emotion literature. A secondary aim is to explore the conceptual metaphor and metonymy profiles of sadness in Turkish folk songs, thus investigating sadness both in general language use and within a culturally specific register. Concordance analysis in the corpus-driven study uncovered verb-specific collocates and cognitive patterns that reflect sadness as an affective state, linking these to multidisciplinary insights into psychological, physiological, behavioural, and cognitive factors. The folk song lyrics were analysed based on established literature categories, revealing Turkish cultural perspectives on sadness and its cognitive underpinnings. Through lexical profiling, the study highlights the subtle yet significant differences among these synonymously listed verbs, showing their distinctive roles in enhancing expressive range in Turkish. Additionally, metaphorical analyses of sadness in folk lyrics reveal cultural codes, physiological and psychological associations, with sadness depicted as an "extremely hot" phenomenon that disrupts internal organs. Unlike sadness in lexical units, folk songs tend to conceptualize a heightened, more intense sadness. This research provides a comprehensive understanding of the concept of sadness in Turkish, contributing both to lexical semantics and to broader cultural studies on emotion expression in language.