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

Full Text:

PDF

References


LITERATURE

Bałabaniak, D., Mitrenga, B. (2015). Polskie intensyfikatory w ujęciu historycznym. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.

Bańkowski, A. (2000). Etymologiczny słownik języka polskiego. Warszawa: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN.

Bolinger, D. (1972). Degree Words. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Boryś, W. (2005). Słownik etymologiczny języka polskiego. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie.

Grzegorczykowa, R. (1975). Funkcje semantycznie i składniowe polskich przysłówków. Wrocław: Ossolineum.

Huddleston, R., Pullum, G. (2002). Adjectives and Adverbs. In: The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (pp. 525–596). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Janus, E. (1981). Wykładniki intensywności cechy (na materiale polskim i rosyjskim). Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.

Partington, A. (1993). Corpus Evidence of Language Change – the Case of the Intensifier. In: M. Baker, G. Francis, E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.) Text and Technology: In Honour of John Sinclair (pp. 177–192). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Stange, U. (2017). “You’re So Not Going to Believe This”: The Use of GenX so in Constructions with Future going to in American English. American Speech, vol. 92(4), 487–524, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00031283-4395168.

Vosshagen, C. (1999). Opposition as a Metonymic Principle. In: K.-U. Panther, G. Radden (eds.), Metonymy in Language and Thought (pp. 289–308). Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Wierzbicka, A. (1969). Dociekania semantyczne. Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich.

Wierzbicka, A. (1971). Kocha, lubi, szanuje. Medytacje semantyczne. Warszawa: Wiedza Powszechna.

WEBSITES

BNC. www.english-corpora.org/bnc [access: 10.09.2020].

Polish National Corpus. www.nkjp.pl [access: 10.09.2020].




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


Statistics


Total abstract view - 912
Downloads (from 2020-06-17) - PDF - 0

Indicators



Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2020

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.