Synthetic Intensification Devices in Old English

Even though degree adverbs (e.g., swiþe) represent the most common intensification strategy in Old English, morphological devices are also very frequent, as expected in a predominantly synthetic language. This article studies synthetic intensification strategies in Old English with a focus on degree modification of adjectives and adverbs by means of spatial formatives (e.g., þurh- in þurhbitter ‘very bitter’ and for- in foreaþe ‘very easily’), paying attention both to the features of the intensifying formative and to the characteristics of the intensified base. Using the cognitive construct of the “Image Schema,” I show that the original spatial meaning of the formatives can help explain their combinatorial preferences in terms of boundedness. Of all the items studied, for- stands out as the most grammaticalized Old English spatial intensifying formative: it is semantically opaque, is very productive with both adjectives and adverbs, and has a very wide collocational profile.

Structure constrains in Polish and English adjectival synthetic compounds

The subject matter of this paper is the external syntax of adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish (e.g. czasochłonny, ciepłolubny, opiniotwórczy, etc.) and English (life-giving, sleep-inducing, far-reaching, etc.). The primary objective of the study is to determine whether -ny/-czy/-ły compounds in Polish and adjectival -ing compounds in English, whose heads appear to be derived from verbs, are deverbal in the sense of Distributed Morphology; that is, whether their external syntax points to the presence of complex verbal structure in their syntactic representation. It is shown that adjectival synthetic compounds in Polish and English behave in a way typical of underived adjectives, being unrestricted in the predicative position and allowing degree modification with very; as such they are not deverbal in the morphosyntactic sense with their syntactic representation lacking the functional heads vP and VoiceP found in deverbal structures. The limited productivity of adjectival synthetic compounds further contributes to their non-eventive status.

Degree Resultatives as Second-Order Constructions

Resultatives in English and Dutch have developed special degree readings. These readings stem from a reinterpretation of the resultative predicate as indicating a high degree rather than an actual result. For example, when a parent saysI love youtodeath, one need not call the cops, since the sentence is not about love turning lethal, but merely indicative of a high degree of affection. Such cases have often been noted in the literature as idiomatic, but this view ignores the fact that these are not isolated cases but productive constructions that can be used with a variety of verbs. We explore various resultative constructions in English and Dutch, and give a classification of the subtypes involved as well as their diachronic development from ordinary to degree interpretation. We link these subtypes to lexical semantic classes of verbs. Both English and Dutch show a steady growth in the lexical and structural diversity of degree resultatives throughout the early modern and contemporary periods (1600-2000). We focus in our paper on the period 1800-2000, for which we did an extensive corpus study using the Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) and Delpher (a collection of digitized Dutch newspapers, journals, magazines, and other resources). One of our findings is that, similar to other types of expressive language, such as degree modification and emphatic negation, taboo expressions play a role in degree resultatives; in fact, their role is excessive. We outline a number of the commonalities among the semantic domains of expressive language used in resultatives.

Degree modification across categories in Afrikaans

The paper presents an analysis of the Afrikaans degree modifier baie ‘very/much/many’. Baie appears to be a single lexical item with a wide distribution in terms of the categories of gradable predicate with which it can combine. However, the paper shows that two syntactically distinct instances of baie should be distinguished. These instances of baie portion out the modification of different grammatical categories between them: one, a head, exclusively modifies gradable adjectives, and the other, an adjunct, modifies the remaining categories of gradable predicate.

Expressive intensifier

Expressive intensifiers (EIs) are a special class of degree expressions found in informal variants of German. They are distinguished from ordinary degree intensifiers like ‘very’ by several special semantic and syntactic properties. Most importantly EIs can appear in what is called the external degree modification construction (EDCs), in which the EI precedes the determiner, but still intensifies an adjective or noun inside the determiner phrase. The main analysis of this EDC is that they are derived via movement, which in turn is triggered by an uninterpretable expressivity feature in D, which attracts the intensifier in order to establish an agreement relation. This also provides a possibility to analyse the form-meaning mismatches that can be observed with EDCs. The upshot of this chapter for the hypothesis of expressive syntax is that expressivity as a syntactic feature can trigger movement.

Degree Modification and Pluractionality in Spanish

Standard and Puerto Rican Spanish has two modifiers, bastante/enough and más/more. These modifiers behave like the Spanish modifier muy/very in that they can modify gradable adjectives. However, these modifiers have an additional property. They are categorically flexible, in that they can combine not only with adjectives but also nouns and verbs. And when they modify verbs, plucational readings emerge. I show that these modifiers convey a multiplicity of pluractional readings that stem from the verb’s lexical property. Also, I show how these modifiers can be syntactically flexible. In the grammar, más and bastante bind to an event variable which determines its semantic. El español puertorriqueño y estándar cuenta con dos modificadores, bastante/enough y más/more. Estos se comportan como el modificador muy/very en que modifica adjetivos gradables. Sin embargo, estos modificadores tienen una propiedad adicional. Son categóricamente flexibles, en que pueden combinar no solamente con adjetivos, pero también con sustantivos y verbos. Y cuando modifican verbos, surge unas interpretaciones de pluraccionales. Demuestro que estos modificadores codifican una multiplicidad de interpretaciones pluraccionales. Estas interpretaciones surgen de las propiedades léxicas del verbo cuyo están modificando. También, demuestro como estos modificadores pueden ser sintácticamente flexibles. En la gramática, más y bastante se enlazan a una variable de eventos el cual determina su semántica.

Postsyntactic inflection of the degree phrase in German

Recent treatments of concord contend that adjectival inflection occurs postsyntactically through the insertion of Agr nodes onto individual, concord-bearing heads after Spell-Out (i.a. Norris 2012, 2014). I examine these claims through the lens of degree modification in German, which demonstrates that current formulations of this approach are untenable. I argue however that a postsyntactic treatment of (adjectival) concord can in fact be maintained if Agr node insertion occurs phrasally at DegP, and not at adjectival heads. This account explains i) an observed difference between the inflection of analytic vs. synthetic degree expressions in both simple and complex modifiers, and ii) a puzzle involving across-the-board inflection of coordinated adjectives, which I argue to involve pointwise attachment of Agr.

Adjectives of completeness as maximizers of event nominalizations

Aspectual modifiers that have adverbial and adjectival counterparts are an important source of information for researching lexical aspect in the nominal domain. One class of such modifiers are adverbs of completeness (completamente 'completely', totalmente 'totally'), which are maximizers when modify adjectives, and their correspondent adjectives (completo 'complete', total 'total'). This paper addresses the inheritance of aspectual features and its relation to degree in event nominalizations of incremental theme verbs (traduccción 'translation', destrucción 'destruction') through the analysis modification by adjectives of completeness in Spanish. The proposal combines a syntactic account of deverbal nominalizations with a scalar approach to aspect. Adjectives of completeness are argued to be aspectual modifiers, with a contribution equivalent to that of their adverbial counterparts both in the verbal and in the adjectival domain, establishing thus a parallelism between degree modification of adjectives, verbs and nominals.