One subtype of aesthetic APPRECIATION is concerned with composition, structure or form, with the question of how well the parts of the entity under evaluation fit together. These are exemplified by such positive terms as harmonious, well-formed, balanced, unified, intricate and negative terms such as ill-formed, convoluted, confused, unbalanced, discordant, contorted.
Another sub-type is concerned with presentation, with whether the entity under considering is pleasing or displeasing `to the senses', so to speak - for example, beautiful, lovely, splendid, breathtaking (positive); plain, ugly, drab (negative).
The situation is complicated somewhat by a third sub-type where we are dealing with values which make reference to, or are derived from, values of AFFECT (emotion). Here we are concerned with utterances such as,
A depressing sight met our eyes.
It's an extremely boring building.
It was a captivating performance.
A terrifying burst of lightening rent the air.
He's grown a deeply disturbing moustache.
These represent a complication because here we encounter terms (depressing, boring, captivating etc) which in other contexts and in other grammatical arrangements would indicate Affect , rather than Appreciation. Thus the following examples of values of Affect,
The sight of the all the dirty plates depressed me.
That type of architecture bores me.
She captivated me with her performance.
The burst of lightening terrified me.
I am disturbed by your moustache.
So why do we, for example, classify `a depressing sight' or `a boring building' as APPRECIATION rather than AFFECT? Crucial here is the fact that the emotional reaction (depress, bore etc) has been detached from any human experiencer of the emotion and been attached to the evaluated entity as if it were some property which the entity objectively and intrinsically possesses. To say that `the building bores me' (AFFECT) is to offer an individualised evaluation which depends entirely on my own, singular state of mind or emotional disposition. It says as much about me, the evaluator, as it does about the building. To say that `the building is boring' (APPRECIATION) is to offer an evaluation of a different order. It is to attribute to the building a property which is represented as being a fixed characteristic of that building, a quality which operates generally and which is not dependent on an individual or variable state of mind or emotional disposition. A connection remains, of course, with the individualised, contingent emotional response. It's just that the emotion has been generalised, objectified and detached from any individual subjecthood.
There are various indicators that this is APPRECIATION rather than AFFECT. For example, the value is oriented to the `appraised' rather than the `appraiser' in the sense that there is no human subject who is represented here as acting as the source of the emotional response. The building is simply `boring' - there is no-one being bored. We saw before that this is a feature which separates APPRECIATION (and JUDGEMENT) from Affect. Similarly, such meanings are not available for the collocational frames outlined above. Thus it would be incongruous to state, `It was boring of the building to feature mock Tudor stylings'.
