Belén Méndez-Naya

Special issue on English intensifiers

Degree modifiers , degree words or intensifiers are linguistic elements which convey the degree or the exact value of the quality expressed by the item they modify. They are typically adverbs, as in very hot , really interesting, greatly appreciate or completely absurd , but adjectives may also fulfil this function, as in utter nonsense . As noted by Bolinger (1972: 18), degree words offer a picture of ‘fevered invention’, and without any doubt constitute one of the major areas of grammatical change and renewal in English (Brinton & Arnovik 2006: 441), especially from the Early Modern English period onwards (Peters 1993). It is therefore no surprise that degree modifiers have attracted so much scholarly attention from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Pioneering studies, such as those by Stoffel (1901), Borst (1902) and Fettig (1934), provide comprehensive inventories of intensifying adverbs in both modern and earlier English, as well as valuable insights into how they originated. In the last decade, however, intensifiers have become the object of renewed interest; this can be attributed in part to the development of computerized corpora, and also to advances in theoretical linguistics, more specifically in the study of semantic change and of grammaticalization processes. This renewed interest has focused, for example, on the individual histories of particular degree items as seen from the perspective of grammaticalization, on the competition of different intensifiers within a given period and across time, and on their distribution across different social groups, varieties or registers.

On the Use of As If, As Though, and Like in Present-Day English Complementation Structures

This investigation is part of the authors’ larger research project on so-called minor declarative complementizers in the history of English, that is, connectives recruited mostly in the adverbial domain that are occasionally used in complementation. The present study sheds light on the complementizer use of the three originally comparative links as if, as though, and like in Present-Day English complement structures. In the theoretical part of the article, the authors argue for the complement analysis of certain clauses depending on as if, as though, and like (e.g., It seemed as if the strange little man had never been there). The empirical part of the study analyzes data drawn from the Brown family of corpora (LOB, Brown, FLOB, and Frown), the Diachronic Corpus of Present-day Spoken English (DCPSE), and the Toronto English Archive (TEA), which are representative of both written and spoken language at different time periods (1960s, 1990s, and early 2000s) and in different varieties of English (British English, American English, and Canadian English). Taking the corpus data as a starting point, and with the aim of revealing what ongoing change is observable in the contemporary language, the authors attend to the following issues: (a) the predicates and construction types associated with these minor links, (b) the factors determining the variation between the three comparative complementizers, and (c) the variation between as if, as though, and like and the default declarative complementizer that.

On the history of downright

Using data retrieved from a variety of diachronic corpora and the OED quotation database, this diachronic study sheds light on the origin and development of the degree function of a low-frequency intensifier, English downright , both as an adverb ( its downright rude ) and as a reinforcing adjective ( downright nonsense ). The history of downright illustrates the interplay between lexicalization and grammaticalization in the evolution of a single item and provides a good example of the crucial role of context and inferencing in semantic change, and of two different trajectories in the development of intensifiers (adjunct > degree modifier, and descriptive adjective > affective adjective > intensifier).

On the origin of clausal parenthetical constructions: Epistemic/evidential parentheticals withseem and impersonalthink

This article contributes to the discussion on the origin of pragmatic markers by exploring the development of parenthetical structures with the two default verbs of seeming in the history of English: seem and impersonal think ‘seem, appear’. Drawing mainly on data from the Helsinki Corpus, we describe the most common construction types in which these two verbs appear, paying especial attention to their parenthetical use. We show that the emergence of parentheticals with these verbs precedes the increase in the frequency of the zero complementizer, thus calling into question Thompson and Mulac’s (1991) matrix-clause hypothesis. Rather, the history of seem- and impersonal think-parentheticals tallies with the developmental path proposed by Brinton (1996, 2008) for the parenthetical I think, as adverbial parentheticals (so/as it seems) clearly antedate bare parentheticals (it seems).

Corpus linguistics on the move

Corpus linguistics on the move: Exploring and understanding English through corpora comprises fourteen contributions covering key issues in English corpus linguistics, including corpus compilation and annotation, original perspectives from specialized corpora, and insightful discussions of various grammatical and pragmatic features.