Escape from Etymology? A Corpus Study of Polish Adjectival Intensifiers

Katarzyna Dziwirek

Abstract


Using the Polish National Corpus (NKJP), the author discusses 31 Polish reinforcing adverbs to determine the degree of their semantic specificity and freedom of connection with adjectives. Empowering adverbs express the person’s judgement, attitudes, and emotions. The author shows that most of the reinforcing adverbs have not deviated from their etymology, even though they are considered synonyms of the word “very”: their etymological meanings influence the choice of the adjective. The most frequently reinforced adjectives in NKJP are “difficult”, “important” and “essential”.


Keywords


intensification; adjective; etymology; connectivity; semantic specificity

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References


LITERATURE

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17951/en.2020.5.453-472
Date of publication: 2020-12-31 10:42:09
Date of submission: 2020-02-22 06:14:18


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