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Exploring Intensification: Synchronic, diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives
Edited by Maria Napoli and Miriam Ravetto
[Studies in Language Companion Series 189] 2017
► pp. 289–304

Chapter 14
What does reduplication intensify?

The semantics and pragmatics of reduplicated forms in Italian and their equivalents in German

| University of Warsaw

In the present paper, the semantics of reduplication forms in Italian is analyzed on the basis of their intensifying pragmatic functions in regard to their base-forms (duration, graduation, modulation, disambiguation, accreditation of speaker, appeal to hearer) and to their “embodied” character (evoking gestuality and suprasegmentality) and compared with their possible equivalents in German. Reduplicative forms in Italian not only modify the truth-conditional value of verbal units – in the direction of a quantitative or qualitative intensification –; furthermore they express a new use-conditional (pragmatic) meaning. Reduplication is, in face-to-face-communication, therefore to be considered an important instrument of emotive communication (as strategic and intentional conveying of emotional information about feelings and attitudes towards things, events, interlocutors), used in specific contexts to express an affective register. Its main function is the modulation of affective intensity and the evocation of conversational and emotional (affective) implicatures. Instead of reduplicated forms, German uses other language resources which produce use-conditional (pragmatic) meanings: intensifiers, intensifying prefixes, modal particles, adverbs, verbal forms.

Keywords: reduplication, intensification, modulation of affective intensity, implicatures, embodied communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The semantics and pragmatics of reduplicative forms in Italian and their equivalents in German
  • 3.Qualitative intensification (of adjectives and adverbs)
  • 4.Duration and gradation
  • 5.Appeal to the hearer (conative function)
  • 6.Accreditation of the speaker, disambiguation and contrastive focus
  • 7.Reduplication as mechanism of embodied communication: Gestuality and suprasegmentality
  • 8.Final remarks
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 September 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.189.15bon
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