Experiential Namespace

Core Definition#

Experiential frames foreground a sentient participant — an Experiencer or a Cognizer — undergoing a mental, perceptual, somatic, or attitudinal event, viewed from that participant's perspective. The primary semantic content is the psychological event itself — perception, emotion, cognition, bodily sensation, or volitional attitude. No physical change in the world is required; the event occurs in psychological or sensory space.

Not a contraposition with Change — a category some psychological events used to be wrongly routed into. EXPERIENTIAL mints its own schema object in the conceptual dimension, directly over EVENT, on constitutive sentience — the same kind of test PROCESS and STATIVE run, over a different constitutive fact (Conceptual Schemas §6.1–6.2). CHANGE is also its own schema object now, an independent sibling of EXPERIENTIAL minted directly over EVENT, not a profile either sits inside of — the two used to be alternative readable-off-the-bindings selections over one shared, richer EVENT cast, back when AGENTIVE/CHANGE/UNDERGOING were profiles rather than objects; that mechanism is gone, and each is now a separate schema with its own native elements. A frame whose sentient participant is constitutive therefore always grounds in EXPERIENTIAL, never in CHANGE or bare EVENT, and so always sits in @experiential, never @change — "Experiential ↔ Change" was carried in earlier documents as a perspective pair alongside the genuine ones (Agentive↔Change, Agentive↔Undergoing, Undergoing↔Change), but it isn't one, on either the old profile-based reading or the current object-based one — "a mental change is EXPERIENTIAL under a CHANGE profile, not a choice between the two," on the terms current when this was first worked out — and Ontological Frames (docs/conceptual/ontological_frames.md) confirms the conclusion survives the restructuring intact: EXPERIENTIAL's own sentience restriction pre-empts any of its siblings regardless of how the schema layer happens to record the construal underneath.

What genuinely varies is the profile within the EXPERIENTIAL grounding itself — which of its own three elements (Agonist, Event, Antagonist — see Relation to the conceptual schema, below) a frame's core FEs reach:

• A profile foregrounding the experiencer/cognizer as an ongoing or telic participant reads as an experience in progress or achieved. (João teme o cachorro, João viu Maria.)
• A profile foregrounding entry into the mental condition — binding Antagonist (the experiencer) together with Event (the force, here read as the stimulus taking hold) — reads as an entry-into-state construal, still squarely inside EXPERIENTIAL. (João se assustou com o cachorro.) No second element is needed for this reading, and none is borrowed from CHANGE: EXPERIENTIAL's own row, Agonist–Antagonist: cause_experience, already asserts both the exerting and the receiving side at once, which is exactly why this namespace needs no separate pair of rows the way AGENTIVE and UNDERGOING do independently. The namespace doesn't move; only which of the three elements a given frame's own cast foregrounds does.

This was found to matter in practice, not just on paper: checked against the live data, frm_awareness_change_scenario (Experiencer + Phenomenon, "the cognitive impact brought about by the Phenomenon"), frm_coming_to_believe (Cognizer + Content), and frm_memorization (Cognizer + Pattern) were all found sitting in @change — every one of them a constitutively sentient frame that belongs in @experiential under this rule. Re-namespacing these three, plus a broader sweep of @agentive/@undergoing/@change for the same pattern, has since been carried out as part of the schema-layer's own Phase 5 re-grounding pass (EVENT-Family Minimality — Database Implementation Plan); treat any individual frame's current namespace value as something to confirm against the live data rather than assumed correct from this document alone.

Formal template:

EXPERIENCE(Experiencer ⊕ Cognizer, [Stimulus | Content], Mental_condition)

Key participants:

• Experiencer ⊕ Cognizer — the sentient participant. The two are mutually exclusive within a frame (FrameNet Excludes pattern): Experiencer for perception / sensation / emotion (undergoes a stimulus); Cognizer for cognition / belief / attitude (entertains a content).
• Stimulus — the external trigger or object of a perception or emotion (optional; entity or event).
• Content — the object of a cognitive or attitudinal member (optional; a proposition or event — a state of affairs — not a mere trigger).

Scope#

Includes:

• Sensory perception: João viu Maria (João saw Maria), Maria ouviu o barulho (Maria heard the noise)
• Emotion: João ama Maria (João loves Maria), Maria teme o escuro (Maria fears the dark)
• Cognition: João sabe a resposta (João knows the answer), Maria entendeu (Maria understood)
• Bodily sensation: A perna de João dói (João's leg hurts), João tem fome (João is hungry)
• Volition / desiderative attitude: João quer sair (João wants to leave), Maria espera vencer (Maria hopes to win)
• Senser-bearing epistemic state: João tem certeza de que venceu (João is certain he won — the Cognizer/Pensador is required)

Excludes — see other namespaces:

• Physical action by a volitional agent → Agentive (João correu)
• Agent causes physical change in a Patient → Agentive (João quebrou o vaso)
• Non-sentient entity undergoes state change → Change (O vaso quebrou)
• A Patient undergoes an externally-instigated event with no psychological quale profiled (only affectedness — the undergoer need not be sentient) → Undergoing (A vítima sofreu ferimentos; o paciente contraiu a doença; cair em emboscada). This is the boundary that pulls patient-undergoer frames — currently housed here on the strength of a sentient-looking subject — out of @experiential. The traffic runs the other way too: Eventive_cognizer_affecting and Fall_for genuinely profile a cognitive quale (belief, decision) and currently sit in @undergoing — see Undergoing's own boundary note.
• Property holds statically of an entity, no psychological quale → Attribute (João é alto)
• Relation holds statically between two entities, no psychological quale → Relational (João é parente de Maria)
• Senser-less modal predication of a proposition (possibility, probability, with no sentient participant) → Attribute (É provável que chova). See the vs. Attribute boundary below — this is the sharpest new boundary.

Critical boundaries:

• Stimulus-subject psych verbs (O filme emocionou Maria) may look Agentive but are Experiential — the Experiencer (Maria) is the semantic focus, not a physical result state.
• Reflexive emotional changes (João se alegrou) stay Experiential — always. The sentient participant is still constitutive, so the frame still grounds in EXPERIENTIAL; what varies is only the profile within that grounding (entry-into-state foregrounds Antagonist + Event, read as the stimulus taking hold). There is no case where the change reading moves the frame to @change — that namespace is reserved for frames whose Antagonist is not constitutively sentient.
• Epistemic frames split by the Senser gate: Certeza (certainty of a thinker, Cognizer required) is Experiential; Possibilidade / Probabilidade (likelihood of a proposition, no Senser) is Attribute.

Subtypes#

By psychological domain:

Note on the Volition / attitude subtype. These desiderative and intentional members (querer, esperar, pretender) take a sentient participant (Cognizer) and an object that is a proposition or event — mapped to Content (a state of affairs), not to Stimulus. They pass the Senser gate and the domain test, so they belong here. This subtype is introduced as a recognized member of the namespace but is not fully developed with its own diagnostics in this revision; treat the Senser gate plus the Content-takes-a-proposition observation as sufficient guidance for now, and develop dedicated tests later if the class warrants it. Senser-less modality (possibility/probability of a proposition) is not part of this subtype — it is excluded to Attribute.

By volitional control — the key internal distinction:

The controlled variant is the agentive reading of the sentient participant; it does not move the frame out of the namespace (domain takes precedence over agentivity — see Aspect note). Portuguese systematically pairs controlled and uncontrolled verbs for the same sensory domain:

By argument structure (psych verb alternation): Many psychological verbs alternate between frames depending on which participant is subject. All three rows below stay @experiential — the alternation is a matter of which profile the frame's bindings trace within one EXPERIENTIAL grounding, not a choice among namespaces (see the corrected boundary in the Core Definition above):

Aspect: Experiential frames span the full aspectual range — stative (João ama Maria; João sabe), eventive/achievement (João viu Maria; João entendeu), and change (João se apaixonou). Aspect does not determine namespace membership — the psychological domain does. This is the governing principle: a stative-aspect experiential frame (saber, amar) stays here, it does not migrate to Stative.

Characteristic signature#

Experiencer ⊕ Cognizer (Excludes). FrameNet keeps Experiencer (undergoes a stimulus/sensation) distinct from Cognizer (entertains a content/proposition). Rather than erase the distinction under a coined cover term, the namespace description carries both as characteristic participants in an Excludes relation — the native FrameNet Core-Set pattern. A specific frame realises whichever its own FE corresponds to. Likewise, members whose object is a trigger express it as a Stimulus; members whose object is a proposition/event (cognition, desiderative attitude — saber, acreditar, querer, esperar) express it as a Content (semantic type State_of_affairs).

Membership gate — the domain test (Test 1). The frame must require a sentient participant (Experiencer or Cognizer) undergoing a mental, perceptual, affective, or attitudinal event, with no physical change in the world required. The domain (psychological) is the membership criterion and takes precedence over aspect and over agentivity:

• The sentient participant's variable role is recorded by the role it plays, not used to reclassify: controlled olhar = agentive; uncontrolled ver = telic endpoint; saber = formal state-bearer. None of these leave @experiential.
• Stimulus-subject experiential frames (O filme emocionou Maria) are classified here, not as Agentive, because the profiled endpoint is the Experiencer's state, not a physical Result. (These are the most causative-like members — the same object-vs-profile relationship as the Experiential/Change boundary above, AGENTIVE being a profile too; not a namespace choice.)

The Senser gate also decides modal-adjacent frames: a frame predicating certainty of a thinker (Certeza, whose definition requires the #Pensador/Cognizer to be expressed) enters @experiential as a cognition member; a frame predicating possibility/probability of a proposition with no sentient participant does not — it is a modal attribute.

graph LR
    Stimulus["Stimulus<br/><i>CONSTITUTIVE</i><br/>optional, trigger"]
    Content["Content<br/><i>CONSTITUTIVE</i><br/>optional, State_of_affairs"]
    Event(("Event"))
    Experiencer["Experiencer<br/><i>TELIC</i> (AGENTIVE if controlled)<br/>Sentient"]
    Cognizer["Cognizer<br/><i>TELIC</i> (AGENTIVE if controlled)<br/>Sentient"]
    Mental["Mental_condition<br/><i>FORMAL</i>"]

    Stimulus -.->|optional| Event
    Content -.->|optional| Event
    Event -->|experienced_by| Experiencer
    Event -->|known_by| Cognizer
    Experiencer ---|Excludes| Cognizer
    Experiencer -->|reaches| Mental
    Cognizer -->|reaches| Mental

    classDef core fill:#8B0000,stroke:#8B0000,color:#fff
    classDef opt fill:#fff,stroke:#8B0000,stroke-dasharray:4 3,color:#8B0000
    class Experiencer,Cognizer,Mental core
    class Stimulus,Content opt

Relation to the conceptual schema#

This page's own vocabulary — Experiencer ⊕ Cognizer, Stimulus, Content, Mental_condition — answers a different question from the conceptual dimension's own EXPERIENTIAL schema (Conceptual Schemas §6.1; Schema Catalog): this page decides which namespace a frame belongs in, using ordinary lexical diagnostics; the schema decides which structure the frame's meaning is read against. EXPERIENTIAL itself carries only three elements — Agonist and Event, inherited unchanged from EVENT, plus its own native Antagonist, restricted by a semantic type to sentient fillers. The rough correspondence:

EXPERIENTIAL needs no separate pair of rows the way AGENTIVE and UNDERGOING do independently, because cause_experience already carries both halves of the claim in one relation — "an experiential event is brought about by exposure to a stimulus; combines agentivity... with the participation of the experiencer." Binding follows from this directly: under EXPERIENTIAL, the sentient participant is the Antagonist, so a cognizer or experiencer binds there, and whatever it cognizes or is stimulated by binds to Agonist — the reverse of the naive expectation that a sentient subject should bind to the schema's own exerting element.

Diagnostic Tests#

Test 1 — Senser gate (sentient participant required)#

Does the frame require a sentient participant — an Experiencer or a Cognizer — as its primary participant? This is the membership gate.

✓ João viu Maria (João = sentient Experiencer) → EXPERIENTIAL
✓ João tem certeza de que venceu (João = Cognizer/Pensador) → EXPERIENTIAL
✗ A pedra caiu (pedra ≠ sentient) → NOT EXPERIENTIAL (Phenomenon)
✗ É provável que chova (no sentient participant) → NOT EXPERIENTIAL (Attribute — modal-attribute of a proposition)

The last line is the decisive exclusion: a frame predicating possibility or probability of a proposition, with no Senser, is a modal Attribute, not a psychological event.

Test 2 — Mental / perceptual domain#

Does the event occur in psychological or sensory space rather than the physical world?

✓ João sabe a resposta (mental state — knowledge) → EXPERIENTIAL
✓ Maria sentiu dor (somatic sensation) → EXPERIENTIAL
✗ João quebrou o vaso (physical change in world) → NOT EXPERIENTIAL (Agentive)

Test 3 — Experiencer vs. Cognizer (which sentient FE)#

Is the object of the event a trigger/stimulus (→ Experiencer + Stimulus) or a proposition/content (→ Cognizer + Content)?

✓ Maria ouviu o barulho (stimulus = barulho) → EXPERIENCER + STIMULUS (perception/emotion)
✓ João acredita que venceu (content = a proposition) → COGNIZER + CONTENT (cognition)
✓ João quer sair (content = a state of affairs) → COGNIZER + CONTENT (volition/attitude)

Experiencer and Cognizer are mutually exclusive within a frame (Excludes).

Test 4 — Control test (agentive vs. non-agentive)#

Can the frame take an imperative directed at the sentient participant?

✓ Olhe! / Escute! / Pense nisso! (controlled) → agentive reading
✗ *Veja Maria! / *Ame João! / *Tenha fome! (uncontrolled) → non-agentive reading

Either way the frame remains Experiential; the test classifies the internal controlled/uncontrolled variant, not namespace membership.

Test 5 — Progressive test (stative vs. eventive within Experiential)#

Does the frame resist the progressive?

Stative experiential (resists progressive):
✗ *João está sabendo a resposta → STATIVE EXPERIENTIAL (saber)
✗ *Maria está amando João → STATIVE EXPERIENTIAL (amar)

Eventive experiential (accepts progressive):
✓ João está olhando para Maria → EVENTIVE EXPERIENTIAL (olhar)
✓ Maria está pensando sobre o problema → EVENTIVE EXPERIENTIAL (pensar)

Test 6 — Psych alternation#

Does the verb participate in the Experiencer-subject / Stimulus-subject alternation?

✓ João teme o cachorro ↔ O cachorro assusta João → PSYCH VERB PAIR
✓ João gosta do filme ↔ O filme agrada João → PSYCH VERB PAIR
✗ João viu Maria ↔ *Maria viu João (no role-reversal alternation) → PERCEPTION (not psych alternation)