Exploring Intensification

Synchronic, diachronic and cross-linguistic perspectives

Editors
Maria Napoli | University of Eastern Piedmont
Miriam Ravetto | University of Eastern Piedmont
HardboundAvailable
ISBN 9789027259547 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
e-Book
ISBN 9789027265128 | EUR 99.00 | USD 149.00
 
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This book is the first collective volume specifically devoted to the multifaceted phenomenon of intensification, which has been traditionally regarded as related to the expression of degree, scaling a quality downwards or upwards. In spite of the large amount of studies on intensifiers, there is still a need for the characterization of intensification as a distinct functional category in the domain of modification. The eighteen papers of the volume contribute to this aim with a new approach (mainly corpus-based). They focus on intensification from different perspectives (both synchronic and diachronic) and theoretical frameworks, concern ancient languages (Hittite, Greek, Latin) and modern languages (mainly Italian, German, English, Kiswahili), and involve different levels of analysis. They also identify and examine different types of intensifiers, applied to different forms and structures, such as adverbs, adjectives, evaluative affixes, discourse markers, reduplication, exclamative clauses, coordination, prosodic elements, and shed light on issues which have not been extensively studied so far.
[Studies in Language Companion Series, 189] 2017.  vii, 394 pp.
Publishing status: Available
Table of Contents
“Maria Napoli and Miriam Ravetto have successfully put together an edited volume, focussing on theoretical aspects of the semantics and pragmatics of intensification, and corpus based studies of realizations of intensification ranging from single word forms to larger chunks, intensification and prosody, and the appearance of new expressions and the decline of others. The book takes stock of previous work in this fascinating field of research, provides new insights in a range of languages and poses questions for future research. In addition to the editors’ eminent introductory overview, the volume offers 18 engaging and well-written chapters, grouped together in a clear and lucid way. It is a most stimulating and extremely readable book – a must for anybody interested in intensifiers and intensification.”
“This volume provides new data, descriptions, and insights in the challenging and intriguing phenomenon of intensification. Recurring themes in the volume are the relation between intensification and other notional categories like comparison, focusing, and evaluation, the distribution of intensifiers across different text types and sociolinguistic parameters, and in particular the objective vs. subjective, emotional-evaluative, dimension of intensification. As Ekkehard König, in his contribution to the volume, puts it : “More often than not, the use of intensifiers tells us more about a speaker than about the situation described”.”
“The eighteen high-quality papers in this volume make for a most enlightening and stimulating read. The overall structure of the collection not only presents the reader with a wide variety of approaches to intensification (historical, cross-linguistic, sociolinguistic and corpus-based), but does so through discussions of a wide variety of languages other than English, and thus the volume constitutes a much needed and very valuable contribution to the field.”
Cited by

Cited by 4 other publications

Blanco-Suárez, Zeltia
2020. Mortal hurryandmortal fine: on the rise of intensifyingmortal. Studia Neophilologica 92:3  pp. 271 ff. DOI logo
Melissaropoulou, Dimitra & Christos Papanagiotou
2021. Language variation and change in the formation of Greek superlative constructions. Dialectologia et Geolinguistica 29:1  pp. 55 ff. DOI logo
Oksefjell Ebeling, Signe & Hilde Hasselgård
2020. Chapter 18. Intensification in dialogue vs. narrative in a corpus of present-day English fiction. In Voices Past and Present - Studies of Involved, Speech-related and Spoken Texts [Studies in Corpus Linguistics, 97],  pp. 302 ff. DOI logo
Prinzie, Thomas, Ferran Suñer & Kristel Van Goethem
2022. From Crystal-clear to Limpide: Translating English [Noun+adj] Compound Adjectives with a Figurative-intensifying Noun into French. Research in Language 20:4  pp. 305 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 12 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.

Subjects

Main BIC Subject

CFK: Grammar, syntax

Main BISAC Subject

LAN009060: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / Syntax
ONIX Metadata
ONIX 2.1
ONIX 3.0
U.S. Library of Congress Control Number:  2017025559 | Marc record