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Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 46:2 (2022) ► pp.285–322

The missing link between truth and intensification

| Shenkar College
| Tel Aviv University

Truth markers commonly evolve into intensifiers (Heine & Kuteva 2002), but we here argue that this shift is only indirect, and a counter-loosening phase necessarily mediates between truth marking and intensification. Counter-looseners instruct the addressee to avoid (or rather, constrain) the very natural interpretative process of broadening, whereby the speaker-intended concept would have been taken as a loosened, “more or less” interpretation of the meaning of the modified expression (Carston 2002). We provide a diachronic analysis for Hebrew mamash ‘really’, which supports our point, and we reinterpret diachronic analyses of other truth markers in order to show that they too underwent a counter-loosening phase before turning intensifiers. Finally, we briefly distinguish between a counter-loosening mediated intensifier evolution (for truth markers, particularizers and maximizers) and a direct evolutionary path into intensification for originally upscaling expressions (extreme scalar modifiers and augmenters).

Keywords: intensifiers, truth attesters, loosening, counter-loosening, semantic change, Paradis’ principle of harmony
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.‘Truth’ will ‘narrow’ before it ‘intensifies’
    • 2.1Problematizing the truth marker to intensifier evolution
    • 2.2Motivating explicit counter-loosening
    • 2.3Counter-loosening and scalarity
    • 2.4From ‘truth’ to ‘counter-loosening’ to ‘intensifying’
  • 3.The evolution of Hebrew mamash ‘real(ly)’
    • 3.1Phase I: Mamash turns into a truth marker
    • 3.2Phase II: From truth marking to ‘counter-loosening’
    • 3.3Towards Phase III: Between ‘counter-loosening’ and intensification
  • 4.Finding the missing link for other truth-based intensifiers
    • 4.1A necessary counter-loosening phase for truth markers
    • 4.2A general mechanism of counter-loosening to intensification
    • 4.3Direct versus indirect paths to intensification
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 June 2021
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.20076.bar
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