John Benjamins Publishing Company
Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time?
Abstract
This article presents a corpus study of German intensifiers, which was conducted with the goal to test the hypothesis of Biedermann (1969) that intensifiers lose their expressivity over time. Following the author, frequently used intensifiers wear out, which results in a loss of expressivity. The goal of the study is to carry out evaluations in the form of synchronic and diachronic frequency distributions. The results show that the use of intensifiers has increased. According to the data, most of them are in an ascending phase and thus, yield no support for the hypothesized loss of expressivity. Further investigations are necessary to validate the above-mentioned hypothesis. Nevertheless, this study provides the first empirical evidence of an increasing use of German intensifiers.
Abstract
This article presents a corpus study of German intensifiers, which was conducted with the goal to test the hypothesis of Biedermann (1969) that intensifiers lose their expressivity over time. Following the author, frequently used intensifiers wear out, which results in a loss of expressivity. The goal of the study is to carry out evaluations in the form of synchronic and diachronic frequency distributions. The results show that the use of intensifiers has increased. According to the data, most of them are in an ascending phase and thus, yield no support for the hypothesized loss of expressivity. Further investigations are necessary to validate the above-mentioned hypothesis. Nevertheless, this study provides the first empirical evidence of an increasing use of German intensifiers.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Chapter 1. Particles 1
- Chapter 2. From up-toning intensifying particle to scalar focus particle 25
- Chapter 3. Do intensifiers lose their expressive force over time? 69
- Chapter 4. The interpretation of the German additive particle auch (‘too, also’) in quantificational contexts 95
- Chapter 5. The German modal particle ja and selected English lexical correlates in the Europarl corpus 117
- Chapter 6. Syntactic change and pragmatic maintenance 147
- Chapter 7. Final though 177
- Chapter 8. A comparative study of German auch and Italian anche 209
- Chapter 9. Scalarity as a meaning atom in wohl -type particles 243
- Chapter 10. Modal particles in questions and wh -sensitivity 269
- Chapter 11. PP-internal particles in Dutch as evidence for PP-internal discourse structure 297
- Chapter 12. Mandarin exhaustive focus shì and the syntax of discourse congruence 323
- Chapter 13. Evidentiality and the QUD 355
- Index 381
