Is Emotion a Moved or a Self-Moving Object? The Concepts of Motion and Emotion in English Metaphors from a Frame-Semantic and Lexico-Grammatical Perspective: A Case Study of the Verb Stir

The aim of the paper is to offer a corpus-based, frame-semantic and lexico-grammatical analysis of metaphorical linguistic expressions that employ the verb stir to conceptualize emotions. The studyreveals that stir, when used metaphorically in the conceptualization of a range of human emotions, participates in a causative-inchoative alternation. All thecorpus examples were annotated according to the frame elements expressed by particular constituents, their grammatical function and phrase type. We have also analysed the metaphorical expressions with respect to +/- caused parameter of the motion taxonomy, as proposed by Zlatev, Blomberg and Magnusson (2012).It has been demonstrated that the metaphorical linguistic expressions with the monovalent, anticausative stir instantiate the metaphor emotion is a self-moving object. The metaphorical use of the divalent, causative stir, on the other hand,can be interpreted according to theemotion is a moved object metaphor. It is believed that recognizing the interplay between these two perspectivesof the motion-emotion metaphors can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of how emotions are experienced and how they affect our behavior.