Construct · 3 fields · 6 citations

Where does valence collide?

One name. Different field. Different construct. One map.

● jingle · one word, three constructs Nearest construct by meaningarousalcompare the meanings
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valence3 CONSTRUCTSChemistryLEWIS · BONDS PER ATOMAffective psych.RUSSELL · PLEASURE AXISLinguisticsTESNIÈRE · VERB ARGUMENTS

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1916Chemistry1959Linguistics1980Affective psych.
2026

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Chemistry

the combining capacity of an atom, counted as the number of chemical bonds it forms with other atoms.

The combining capacity of an atom, counted as the number of chemical bonds it forms with other atoms. The nineteenth-century notion of a fixed combining power acquired its mechanism in Lewis's 1916 account, in which a bond is a pair of electrons shared between two atoms and an element's valence is the number of such shared pairs it can sustain: hydrogen one, oxygen two, carbon four. Valence is a small whole number attached to an element, prior to any particular molecule. Smith later set it apart from oxidation state, the charge under an ionic accounting, and from coordination number, the count of attached atoms; the three coincide in simple cases and diverge in most others. Nothing here refers to a feeling or to a sentence.[1][2]

Unit
An atom's number of bonds
Recovery means
Not applicable; a combining capacity
Measured by
The count of electron-pair bonds an atom forms; a small whole number per element

Affective psychology

Valence as the pleasantness of a feeling

The positive or negative quality of an emotion, one of the two axes of Russell's 1980 circumplex model of affect. Russell arranged affective states around a circle spanned by two independent dimensions, valence, running from displeasure to pleasure, and arousal, running from sleepiness to activation, so that content, depressed, excited, and tense are positions on the rim rather than discrete states. Valence here is a property of felt experience, read from self-report, and it locates the same feeling whatever caused it. Posner, Russell, and Peterson later mapped the two dimensions onto neural systems, treating valence and arousal as the primitives from which discrete emotions are built. The word marks an axis of feeling, not a count of bonds.[3][4]

Unit
A felt emotion's position on the pleasant-to-unpleasant axis
Recovery means
Not applicable; a dimension of experience
Measured by
Self-report ratings placed on a pleasure-to-displeasure dimension; the valence axis of the affect circumplex

Linguistics

the number of arguments, or actants, a verb governs and requires.

The number of arguments a verb governs, its valency, also spelled valence. Tesnière built his dependency grammar on an explicit chemical analogy: the verb is the nucleus of the clause and its valency is the number of actants it requires, so that a verb is avalent (it rains), monovalent (she sleeps), divalent (he reads a book), or trivalent (she gives him a book). The count is a syntactic property of a lexical item, fixed in the lexicon and independent of any particular sentence, and it governs whether a clause is complete. The borrowed word keeps the arithmetic of chemistry and none of its referent: an atom's bonds and a verb's arguments are counted alike and are not the same thing.[5][6]

Unit
A verb's number of required arguments
Recovery means
Not applicable; a lexical property
Measured by
The count of actants a verb governs; avalent, monovalent, divalent, or trivalent

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Nearby collisions

sentiment6 fields · 15 citationsjingle · one name, six constructsenergy5 fields · 10 citationsjingle · one word, five constructselasticity3 fields · 7 citationsjingle · one word, three sciences

References

  1. Lewis, G. N. (1916). The atom and the molecule. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 38(4), 762–785. https://doi.org/10.1021/ja02261a002
  2. Smith, D. W. (2005). Valence, covalence, hypervalence, oxidation state, and coordination number. Journal of Chemical Education, 82(8), 1202–1204. https://doi.org/10.1021/ed082p1202
  3. Russell, J. A. (1980). A circumplex model of affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39(6), 1161–1178. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0077714
  4. Posner, J., Russell, J. A., & Peterson, B. S. (2005). The circumplex model of affect: An integrative approach to affective neuroscience, cognitive development, and psychopathology. Development and Psychopathology, 17(3), 715–734. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0954579405050340
  5. Tesnière, L. (1959). Éléments de syntaxe structurale. Klincksieck.
  6. Tesnière, L. (2015). Elements of structural syntax (T. Osborne & S. Kahane, Trans.). John Benjamins. (Original work published 1959) https://doi.org/10.1075/z.185

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