Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis of a Turkish Sadness Verb Hüzünlen

This study provides a semantic and pragmatic analysis of the Turkish verb "hüzünlen-" which conveys the meaning of sadness. Following a corpus-driven approach, query sequences from the Turkish National Corpus (TNC) were analysed according to the Extended Lexical Units model. In this context, 284 query sequences found in real spoken and written language samples were examined to determine the lexical profile of the verb "hüzünlen-." The aim of the study is to reveal the semantic and pragmatic usage differences of the verb "hüzünlen-" comparedæ to other verbs expressing sadness. In this regard, the syntactic features, collocational tendencies, and context dependent semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the verb "hüzünlen-" were thoroughly investigated. As a corpus-driven study, this research is the result of an inductive examination. The study demonstrated that the lexical framework of the verb "hüzünlen-"implies a sudden, intense sadness often related to past events and circumstances. The findings contribute to a better understanding of the cultural and linguistic features of expressing sadness in Turkish, as well as to comprehending the cognitive aspects of the emotion of sadness. Furthermore, the results of the study offer significant insights into how expressions of sadness are shaped in linguistic and cultural contexts in Turkish, allowing for a broader perspective on the linguistic representation of sadness. This research suggests that the verb "hüzünlen-" should be examined not only in Turkish but also in comparison with similar emotional expressions in other languages. Thus, it can contribute to understanding the universal and culture-specific features of language and emotion.