This study deals with the emphasizing use of adjective pure, as in pure heaven, pure unbridled hell, which heightens the semantic specifications of the following nominal description. On the basis of close analysis of synchronic and diachronic data, it is argued that the peculiarities of Present-day emphasizer pure are the result of two distinct but mutually reinforcing paths of development. Emphasizing pure first appeared as a subjective heightener of emotion nouns in the syntactic environment pure + noun, in which it subsequently spread to other collocational sets. The contextual emphasizing use, e.g. in pure spirit, seems to have been a facilitating factor in this process. In the pattern pure and adjective + noun, the emphasizing use cropped up only at the end of Late Modern English as the result of leftward movement and subjectification (Adamson 2000), enabled by contextual modulation of pure by the other adjective. These two paths were linked by shared collocational sets such as the emotion nouns.
2021. Alex Ho-Cheong Leung and Wim van der Wurff (eds.), The noun phrase in English: Past and present (Linguistik Aktuell Linguistics Today 246). Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2018. Pp. 229. ISBN 9789027200723.. English Language and Linguistics 25:2 ► pp. 418 ff.
Davidse, Kristin & Tine Breban
2019. A cognitive-functional approach to the order of adjectives in the English noun phrase. Linguistics 57:2 ► pp. 327 ff.
Méndez-Naya, Belén
2019. Ofright heirs, right idiotsandbad data. The diachrony of the intensifying adjectiveright. Studia Neophilologica 91:3 ► pp. 273 ff.
GONZÁLEZ-DÍAZ, VICTORINA
2018. Great big stories and tiny little changes: tautologicalsize-adjective clusters in Present-day English. English Language and Linguistics 22:3 ► pp. 499 ff.
González-Díaz, Victorina
2021. Intensificatory Tautology in the History of English: A Corpus-based Study. Journal of English Linguistics 49:2 ► pp. 182 ff.
González‐Díaz, Victorina
2009. Little old problems: adjectives and subjectivity in the English NP. Transactions of the Philological Society 107:3 ► pp. 376 ff.
González‐Díaz, Victorina
2018. Tracing The Development Of AnOld Old Story: Intensificatory Repetition In English. Transactions of the Philological Society 116:1 ► pp. 30 ff.
2011. The development of intensification scales in noun-intensifying uses of adjectives: sources, paths and mechanisms of change. English Language and Linguistics 15:2 ► pp. 251 ff.
Davidse, Kristin
2009. Completeandsort of: from identifying to intensifying?. Transactions of the Philological Society 107:3 ► pp. 262 ff.
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