Intensification or degree modification by means of adverbs and adjectives has been the object of linguistic study for many years, yet there is still a need for clear delineation of this functional category. This study focuses on the differences and similarities between the functional domains of intensification and focusing. The latter function has mainly been described for adverbs, with little attention to its adjectival realizations and to its relation to intensification. By means of corpus studies of pure, purely, mere and merely, it is shown that intensification and focusing are similar to some extent, both engaging in interpersonal modification (McGregor 1997), yet also distinct with intensification being semantically scalar, attitudinal and inherently subjective and focusing being only potentially pragmatically scalar, rhetorical and textually intersubjective.
Athanasiadou, Angeliki. 2007. On the subjectivity of intensifiers. Language Sciences 29: 554–565.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1967. Adjectives in English: Attribution and predication. Lingua 18: 1–34.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. Degree Words. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
Breban, Tine & Davidse, Kristin. 2016. The history of very: The directionality of functional-structural change and (inter)subjectification. English Language and Linguistics 20: 1–29.
Carlier, Anne & De Mulder, Walter. 2010. The emergence of the definite article: ille in competition with ipse in Late Latin. In Subjectification, Intersubjectification, and Grammaticalization, Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte & Hubert Cuyckens (eds), 241–275. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Davidse, Kristin & Ghesquière, Lobke. 2016. Content-purport, content-substance and structure: Focusing mere and merely. Acta Linguistica Hafniensia 48(1): 85–109.
Diessel, Holger. 2006. Demonstratives, joint attention, and the emergence of grammar. Cognitive Linguistics 17: 463–489.
Eckardt, Regine. 2012. The many careers of negative polarity items. In Grammaticalization and Language Change: New Reflections [Studies in Language Companion Series 130], Kristin Davidse, Tine Breban, Lieselotte Brems & Tanja Mortelmans (eds), 299–326. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gehweiler, Elke. 2008. The grammaticalization of the German adjectives lauter (and eitel). In Grammaticalization: Current Views and Issues [Studies in Language Companion Series 119], Ekaterini Stathi, Elke Gehweiler & Ekkehard König (eds), 297–322. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Gehweiler, Elke. 2011. The Grammaticalization of Privative Adjectives: Present-day Uses and Diachronic Development. PhD dissertation, FU Berlin.
Ghesquière, Lobke. 2014. The Directionality of (Inter)subjectification in the English Noun Phrase: Pathways of Change. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.
Ghesquière, Lobke, Brems, Lieselotte & Van de Velde, Freek. 2014. Intersubjectivity and intersubjectification: Typology and operationalization. In Intersubjectivity and Intersubjectification in Grammar and Discourse: Theoretical and Descriptive Advances [Benjamins Current Topics 65], Lieselotte Brems, Lobke Ghesquière & Freek Van de Velde (eds), 129–153. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hischberg, Julia. 1991. A Theory of Scalar Implicature. New York NY: Garland.
Huddleston, Rodney & Pullum, Geoffrey. 2002. The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: CUP.
Kennedy, Christopher & McNally, Louise. 2005. Scalar structure, degree modification, and the semantics of gradable predicates. Language 81: 345–381.
König, Ekkehard. 1991. The Meaning of Focus Particles: A Comparative Perspective. London: Routledge.
Leisi, Elizabeth. 1967[1961]. Der Wortinhalt. Seine Struktur im Deutschen und Englischen, 3. Durchgesehene und erweiterte Auflage. Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer.
Murray, James A.H., Brodly, Henry, Craigie, W. A. & Onions, C. T.1993. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford: OUP.
Nevalainen, Terttu. 1991. BUT, ONLY, JUST. Focusing Adverbial Change in Modern English 1500–1900. Helsinki: Société Neophilologique.
Nevalainen, Terttu & Rissanen, Matti. 2002. Fairly pretty or pretty fair? On the development and grammaticalization of English downtoners. Language Sciences 24: 359–380.
Paradis, Carita. 1997. Degree Modifiers of Adjectives in Spoken British English. Lund: Lund University Press.
Paradis, Carita. 2000. Reinforcing Adjectives: A cognitive semantic perspective on grammaticalization. In Generative Theory and Corpus Studies: A Dialogue from 10 ICEHL, Ricardo Bermudez-Otero, David Denison, Richard M. Hogg & Chris B. Mccully (eds), 233–258. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Paradis, Carita. 2001. Adjectives and boundedness. Cognitive Linguistics 12: 47–65.
Peters, Hans. 1994. Degree adverbs in Early Modern English. In Studies in Early Modern English, Dieter Kastovsky (ed.), 269–288. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
Stoffel, Cornelis. 1901. Intensives and Down-toners: A Study in English Adverbs. Heidelberg: Winter.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 2006. The Semantic Development of Scalar Focus Modifiers. In The Handbook of the History of English, Ans Van Kemenade & Bettelou Los (eds), 335–359. Oxford: Blackwell.
Tribushinina, Elena. 2008. Cognitive Reference Points: Semantics beyond the Prototypes in Adjectives of Space and Colour. Utrecht: LOT.
PPCME2 = Kroch, Anthony & Taylor, Ann. 2000. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition. <[URL]>
PPCEME = Kroch, Anthony, Santorini, Beatrice & Delfs, Lauren. 2004. Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English. <[URL]>
CLMET3.0 = The Corpus of Late Modern English Texts, version 3.0. Diller, Hans-Jürgen, De Smet, Hendrik & Tyrkko, Jukka. 2011. A European database of descriptors of English electronic texts. The European English Messenger 19: 21–35.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 november 2024. 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.