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Journal of Chinese Language and Computing 18 (3): 107-119 107 Mandarin emotion verbs: a frame-based analysis Meichun Liu, Shihmei Hong Institute of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan 1001 Ta-hsueh Rd., Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan mliu@.tw, nancy219219@ Abstract This paper aims to classify Mandarin verbs of emotion by adopting a frame-based (Fillmore Atkins 1992) and corpus-based approach, and propose that there should be a more distinct schema than the structure of frames in FrameNet ). We start with exploring equivalents of the (/ ~FrameNet/ English verbs of the emotion domain in FrameNet, the database provides frame-based lexical information. However, a purely frame-based approach may be inadequate for Mandarin verbs, hence we create a new classification of Mandarin emotional verbs differing from FrameNet and previous studies. Keywords emotion verbs, frame-based, corpus-based, FrameNet, lexical semantics 1 Introduction Lexical semantics has been an important area in linguistics. Verbs, as the core of lexicon, provide the key to exploring the interaction between syntax and semantics as well as understanding the nature of lexicon. Examples below illustrate the unique syntactic patterns and semantic properties of Mandarin emotion verbs. (1) a. 媽媽覺得/感覺/感到高興/*原諒。 b. *媽媽後悔/擔心/原諒高興。 (2) a. 媽媽很高興/難過/生氣/煩惱/害怕(小明會來) 。 b. 媽媽原諒(*他的過錯) 。 (3) a. 媽媽很高興/難過/生氣/煩惱/害怕/後悔/渴望/希望……。 b. *媽媽很寬恕/原諒/覺得/感覺/感到……。 In (1), only the verb juede 覺得(feel) can be followed by another emotional verb, 108 Meichun Liu, Sh