Fairly pretty or pretty fair? On the development and grammaticalization of English downtoners  

Oleh:

Nevalainen, Terttu ; Rissanen, Matti

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Language Sciences (Full Text) vol. 24 no. 3-4 (2002), page 359–380.
Topik: Adverbs (intensifying); Corpus linguistics; English; Inflection vs. derivation; Grammaticalization; Semantic change
Fulltext: 24_03-04_Nevalainen.pdf (179.3KB)

Isi artikel

The paper discusses the adverbialization of two roughly synonymous present-day English intensifiers, pretty and fairly. Based on electronic corpora, a quantitative analysis of their long-term history is provided using the framework of adverbfunctions proposed by Quirk et al. [Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J., 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman, London]. The results indicate that, despite some of their shared meanings, the two items underwent non-identical processes of adverbialization. These findings are set against a wider framework of grammaticalization. The question is asked whether adverbformation is regular enough to constitute an inflectional process in Modern English. The productivity of -ly suffixation is discussed as the chief argument for adverbialization being inflectional rather than derivational. The conclusion is reached, however, that too many exceptions can be found to lend credence to this generalization.

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