Further explorations in the grammar of intensifier marking in Modern English
Picking up on earlier analyses, this paper explores a number of further issues bearing on the replacement of unmarked intensifiers by suffixed ones. While the evolutions of individual intensifiers may vary enormously, almost all grammatical constraints on intensifier marking can be accounted for in terms of a verbality cline: Structures displaying a high degree of verbality promote the establishment of suffixed intensifiers whereas less verbal structures tend to delay the process. The major findings supporting this generalization include the following:
-
Past participles, which virtually always function as predicatives, represent one of the earliest categories to implement the change. In this respect, they contrast with present participles, which tend to behave like ordinary adjectives.
-
Compared with predicative adjectives, attributive adjectives have been slow to replace unmarked intensifiers by suffixed ones.
-
The establishment of the suffix is further advanced with complemented (non-attributive) adjectives than uncomplemented ones.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Past and present participles
- 3.Predicative and attributive adjectives
- 4.Two kinds of adverbs
- 5.Prepositional phrases and NPs
- 6.Manner adverbs and adjectives
- 7.Concluding remarks
-
References
-
Electronic sources
References
Biber, Douglas
(
1988)
Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Fischer, Olga
(
2001)
The Position of the Adjective in (Old) English from an Iconic Perspective. In
Olga Fischer, &
Max Nänny (Eds.),
The Motivated Sign (=
Iconicity in Language and Literature 2) (249–276). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hawkins, John A.
(
1986)
A Comparative Typology of English and German: Unifying the Contrasts. London: Croom Helm.
Nevalainen, Terttu
(
1994)
Aspects of Adverbial Change in Early Modern English. In
Dieter Kastovsky (Ed.),
Studies in Early Modern English (243–259). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Nevalainen, Terttu
(
2008)
Social Variation in Intensifier Use: Constraint on -ly Adverbialization in the Past? English Language and Linguistics 12, 289–315.
Peters, Hans
(
1994)
Degree Adverbs in Early Modern English. In
Dieter Kastovsky (Ed.),
Studies in Early Modern English (269–288). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey, & Svartvik, Jan
(
1972)
A Grammar of Contemporary English. London: Longman.
Rohdenburg, Günter
(
1998)
Attributive Adjectives like similar and different Involving Prepositional Complements. In
Wolfgang Kühlwein (Ed.), Language as Structure and Language as Process. In Honour of Gerhard Nickel on the Occasion of his 70th Birthday (63–79). Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.
Rohdenburg, Günter
(
2014)
Syntactic Constraints on the Use of Dual Form Intensifiers in Modern English. In
Kristin Davidse,
Caroline Gentens,
Lobke Ghesquière, &
Lieven Vandelanotte (Eds.),
Corpus Interrogation and Grammatical Patterns (132–149). Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Rohdenburg, Günter
(
2016)
Testing two Processing Principles with Respect to the Extraction of Elements out of Complement Clauses.
English Language and Linguistics 20, 463–486.
Rohdenburg, Günter
(
2018)
On the Differential Evolution of Simple and Complex Object Constructions in English. In
Hubert Cuyckens,
Hendrik De Smet,
Liesbeth Heyvaert, &
Charlotte Maekelberghe (Eds.),
Explorations in English Historical Syntax (77–104). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
De Smet, Hendrik
(
2012)
The Course of Actualization.
Language 88, 801–833.
Ungerer, Friedrich
(
1988)
Syntax der englischen Adverbien. Tübingen: Niemeyer.
Vosberg, Uwe & Rohdenburg, Günter
The Rivalry between far from being + Predicative Item and its Counterpart Omitting the Copula in Modern English. In this volume.
Electronic sources
BNC British National Corpus
1995 Version 1.0. BNC Consortium/Oxford. University Computing Services. (100,000,000 words)
ECF Eighteenth-Century Fiction
1996 Chadwyck-Healey. (9,702,696 words, omitting duplicates)
ECF1
First part of the ECT containing only those authors born in the 17th century (5,130,162 words)
EEPF Early English Prose Fiction
1997-2000 Chadwyck-Healey. In
association with the Salzburg Centre for Research on the English Novel SCREEN. (9,562,865 words)
EPD English Prose Drama
1996-1997 Chadwyck-Healey. (26,454,639words)
NCF Nineteenth-Century Fiction
1999-2000 Chadwyck-Healey. (37,589,837 words)
NCF1
First part of the NCF containing only those authors born in the 18th century (11,373,834 words)
OED The Oxford English Dictionary
Second Edition) on CD-ROM 1992 (Version 1.10) Edited by
John A. Simpson &
Edmund S. C. Weiner Oxford Oxford University Press
wridom1 imaginative component of the BNC
= narrative fiction). (18,863,529 words)
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Vosberg, Uwe & Günter Rohdenburg
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 22 march 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.