The Diachronic Change Of English Adjective Intensifiers

Intensifiers are commonly used in spoken and written language to reinforce the modified constituents,effectively convey messages and achieve expressivity,with the prototypical function being adjective intensification.Previous studies have mostly focused on the synchronic variation of intensifiers without considering the diachronic variation of intensifying use or adopted apparent-time data to construct changes without evidence from real-time data.Given that the intensifier system is characterized by waxing and waning of forms,renewal and competition,the diachronic study of intensifiers is an important topic in the field of language change.Therefore,the study aims to enhance the understanding of the developmental process of intensifiers with still developing newcomers pretty and really as cases.Guided by construction grammar and a diachronic corpus-based methodology,it tracks the diachronic changes of pretty and really as adjective intensifiers over the past 200 years(1820-2019)in American English by using large-scale historical corpora COHA,focusing on the changes in distribution,syntactic contexts and semantics and exploring the underlying mechanisms.The findings:(1)Concerning distribution,the general frequencies of pretty and really have a very strong correlation with time and they exhibit a statistically significant upward trend over time,implying the dynamicity of the intensifier system.Pretty undergoes a pattern of rise-relative stability-second rise and experiences four developmental stages by VNC:1820s-1860s,1870s-1900s,1910s-2000s and 2010s,while shows incremental rise-dramatic rise and experiences four developmental stages:1820s-1860s,1870s-1940s,1950s-1980s and 1990-2010s.Genre diffusion shows both Pretty and really have uneven distribution and prefer informal genres with pretty favoring fiction and really favoring popular magazine.Diachronically,pretty exhibits a significant upward trend in fiction and popular magazine while really exhibits a significant rising trend in fiction and popular magazine and a marginally significant trend in non-fiction.This suggests that genre formality may impact the distribution and change of intensifiers.Additionally,a noteworthy rise after the mid20th century of both pretty and really in news may relate to the stylistic shift of colloquialization and its preference for innovative forms.(2)Concerning syntactic contexts,it shows pretty and really prefer to occur in predication.Diachronically,pretty undergoes a transition from attributive context to predicative context at the turn of the 20th century while really remains stable with predication occurring more than attribution.This highlights the complexity and specificity of intensifiers.Furthermore,the frequency increase ofpretty and really can be linked to predication,which indicates that compared with attribution,predication is more prone to change and predicative adjectives may serve as an important impetus in the diachronic change of intensifiers.(3)Concerning semantics,collostructional analysis and semantic mapping find that pretty undergoes a significant change at the turn of the 20th century from a preference for dimensional adjectives such as size and wide distribution to that for adjectives of value such as goodness,simplicity and typicality.Really experiences a change in the mid-20th century from a preference for adjectives of human propensity such as psychological state and affection to that for adjectives of value.The adjectives of dimension and physical property also experience a moderate rise.ΔP algorithm identifies a stronger attraction and predictability of adjectives for intensifiers.In terms of semantic prosody,pretty exhibits neutral prosody while really demonstrates positive prosody.Diachronically,neutral prosody of Pretty decreases while positive and negative prosody increase.Positive prosody of really plunges while negative and neutral prosody rise.This indicates the distribution of semantic prosody may be more even with developments.Finally,it holds that expressivity,colloquialization,grammaticalization and delexicalization are possible underlying mechanisms.Based on diachronic corpus-based quantitative methods and large-scale data,the findings are objective and convincing.It is significant in enriching the understanding of the diachronic developments of intensifiers,providing paths for studies of other intensifiers and contributing to diachronic corpus linguistics and dictionary compilation.