Some remarks on intensification of nouns in Latin

Abstract

The phenomenon of intensification – intended as the strategy of scaling upwards or downwards the semantic content of linguistic entities belonging to different word classes (i.e., not only adjectives but also nouns and verbs) – has received a great deal of attention from both a synchronic and a diachronic point of view. This paper investigates intensification of Latin nouns in the light of recent research in theoretical linguistics on this topic, by giving a preliminary account of some issues related to the Latin state of affairs. I will examine the strategies employed to intensify nouns in some Plautus' and Cicero's texts, by focusing on the use of adverbs as intensifiers expressing a high degree or the highest degree. Moreover, it will be shown that the approach followed in this paper, based on the individuation of the degree meaning of adjectives, may cast new light on their use as nominal intensifiers in the Latin language. It will be further suggested that in Latin nouns may be strengthened by intensifiers independently of their being gradable or not, as happens in modern languages.