Chapter published in:
Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Maria Napoli and Miriam Ravetto
[Studies in Language Companion Series 189] 2017
► pp. 15–32

The comparative basis of intensification

| Freie Universität Berlin | Universität Freiburg
This paper argues that the ubiquitous cognitive process of comparing and the resultant judgements of similarity and dissimilarity also underlie the semantic processes of intensification and grading to a large extent. This comparative basis is visible both in the formal properties of many intensifiers and in central aspects of their semantics: Intensifiers may overtly encode a comparison (e.g. crystal clear, royally, outstanding) and an emotional reaction to a comparison (surprisingly, frightfully), or they may imply a comparison with a covert standard in endocentric expansions of simple adjectival predications. In order to gain a new perspective on their meaning, the relations between intensifiers, on the one hand, and demonstratives, exclamatives and comparative constructions, on the other, are analyzed and a semantic typology of comparative constructions is outlined and discussed in relation to the central hypothesis.
Keywords: intensifiers, comparison, demonstratives, exclamatives, semantic typology
Published online: 30 September 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.189.02kon
References

References

Alder, Ken
2014 The Measure of all Things. Reprinted. New York NY: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Athanasiadou, Angeliki
2007 On the subjectivity of intensifiers. Language Sciences 29: 554–565. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Barsalou, Lawrence W.
2008 Grounded cognition. Annual Review of Psychology 59: 617–645. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Bierwisch, Manfred
1987 The semantics of gradation. In Dimensional Adjectives: Grammatical Structure and Conceptual Interpretation, Manfred Bierwisch & Ewald Lang (eds), 71–261. Berlin: Springer.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight
1972 Degree Words. The Hague: Mouton. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Cesare, Anna-Maria
2001 Sulla semantica di alcuni tipi di intensificazione in italiano: ‘Davvero è molto interessante!’. Romanisches Jahrbuch 51: 87–107.Google Scholar
Fuchs, Catherine
2014 La comparaison et son expression en Français. Paris: Editions Ophrys.Google Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin & Buchholz, Oda
1998 Equative and similative constructions in the languages of Europe. In Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe, Johan van der Auwera (ed.), 277–334. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Haspelmath, Martin
2017 Equative Constructions in world-wide perspective. InSimilative and Equative Constructions: A Crosslinguistic Perspective [Typological Studies in Language 117], Yvonne Treis & Martine Vanhove (eds), 9–32. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Himmelmann, Nikolaus
1997 Deiktikon, Artikel, Nominalphrase: Zur Emergenz syntaktischer Struktur. Tübingen: Niemeyer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey
2002 The Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge: CUP.Google Scholar
Ito, Rika & Tagliamonte, Sali
2003 Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers. Language in Society 32: 257–279. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Kennedy, Christopher
1999 Projecting the Adjective: The Syntax and semantics of Gradability and Comparison. New York, NY: Garland.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Christopher & McNally, Louise
2005 Scale structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicate. Language 81(2): 345–381. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
König, Ekkehard
2015 Manner deixis as a source of grammatical markers in Indo-European languages. In Perspectives on Historical Syntax [Studies in Language Companion Series 169], Carlotta Viti (ed), 35–60. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Napoli, Maria
2015 The syntax of excess: On the Italian (essere) troppo per construction. Archivio Glottologico Italiano 100(1): 51–84.Google Scholar
Paradis, Carita
1997 Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English [Lund Studies in English 92]. Lund: Lund University.Google Scholar
2008 Configurations, construals and change: Expressions of DEGREE. English Language and Linguistics 12(2): 317–343. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan
1985 A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Rett, Jessica
2011 Exclamatives, degrees and speech acts, Linguistics and Philosophy 34(5): 411–442. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2015 The Semantics of Evaluativity. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar
Siemund, Peter
2015 Exclamative clauses in English and their relevance for theories of clause types. Studies in Language 39(3): 697–727. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Stassen, Leon
1985 Comparison and Universal Grammar. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
2005 Comparative Constructions. In The World Atlas of Language Structures, Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds), 490–493. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Blanco-Suárez, Zeltia
2020. Mortal hurry and mortal fine: on the rise of intensifying mortal. Studia Neophilologica 92:3 ► pp. 271 ff. Crossref logo
Melissaropoulou, Dimitra & Christos Papanagiotou
2021. Language variation and change in the formation of Greek superlative constructions. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 29:1 ► pp. 55 ff. Crossref logo
Schweinberger, Martin
2020.  In Corpora and the Changing Society [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 96], ► pp. 223 ff. Crossref logo
Van Goethem, Kristel & Isa Hendrikx
2021.  In Constructions in Contact 2 [Constructional Approaches to Language, 30], ► pp. 376 ff. Crossref logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 25 december 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.