Subjectivity And Subjectification Of The Intensifying Uses Of Extreme Adjectives

Extreme adjectives?EA for short?are those which embrace maximizing“complete”,“pure”and“bad”senses?Paradis,2000?.They often collocate with nouns,either abstract or specific,expressing the SP/W's?speaker/writer?strong feelings and attitudes.This intensifying uses of EA are quite pervasive and have drawn the attention of many scholars.Though some insightful studies have been made,there are still many insufficiencies and controversies.Some researchers argue that these adjectives have developed from lexical description to schematic intensification through grammaticalization and subjectification.However,little agreement has been reached concerning the mechanisms of this development.Moreover,some scholars believe that the intensifying uses of EA are the instantiations of“Degree modifier+NP”structures but the involvement of the SP/W's subjective factors is seldom discussed.Last,several examples were taken into previous discussion,but the adjectives are randomly chosen,lacking in pertinence,comprehensiveness and systematicity.Among all the EAs,complete,neutral in emotional connotation,is the most frequently-used one that can collocate with nouns referring to both positive and negative entities.Likewise,both the commendatory perfect and the derogative awful can collocate with nouns referring to both positive and negative entities.This thesis therefore will take complete,perfect and awful as examples to explore EA's intensifying uses,as well as the motivations and mechanisms underlying this semantic development.This thesis is based on Langacker's and Traugott's subjectivity and Traugott's subjectification theory,and the data in this thesis are mainly from Helsinki,BNC and COCA corpora.The major findings are:I)Adjectives like complete,perfect and awful often collocate with nouns referring to both positive and negative entities for the purpose of intensification.Nouns that can invoke the intensifying readings of these adjectives are gradable,abstract or specific but can be quantified and measured at an abstracted level.Nouns collocating with EAs for intensifying uses are categorized according to whether they denote state,emotion,action,event or people.It is the SP/W's subjective factors involving perspective,affect and epistemic modality that work with EA and bring about their intensifying uses.II)When EAs collocate with gradable nouns for intensifying uses,their propositional meanings are backgrounded while their schematic meanings are foregrounded.The structures“EA+NP”are interpreted somewhat equivalent to the“very?completely?+[adjective/verb-like]NP”structure,examplifying the“ENTITY for PROPERTY”metonymy.This is attributed more to the properties of NP themselves rather than to the properties of EA.III)Due to differences in the SP/W's construals of the entities,the use of“EA+NP”shows great intersubjective differences.This structure can be used to emphasize both positive and negative meanings,so it is a good means of pragmatic strengthening.IV)For the purpose of expressing the speaker's stance,affect and attitude,EAs are used before abstract nouns for emphasis.This is driven by the process of subjectification.V)EA appeared rarely together with abstract nouns before the 18^th century.With the active involvement of subjectification,EAs increasingly collocate with more abstract or specific nouns for intensifying use during and after the mid of 19^th century.In 20^th century,adjectives like complete,perfect and awful collocate with more and more abstract and specific nouns,indicating states,emotion,actions,events and persons for intensifying uses.This thesis,integrating Langacker'and Traugott's subjectivity and subjectification theories,explores the intensifying uses of EAs,their syntactic and semantic features,and the classifications of uses of EA in intensifying contexts.It also investigates the motivations and mechanisms of EAs'intensifying uses,and attempts to give insights into the understanding of subjectivity and subjectification.It is expected to shed some lights on language learning and translation and offer a new way to understand these special uses in English.