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Ulrike Claudi

Intensifiers of adjectives in German

Keywords: intensifiers, grammaticalization, adverbs, degree adverbs, German

Work on grammaticalization that has bee carried out in the course of the last decades has shown that there are some domains of grammatical structure that are more conservative while others are more innovative. The present paper deals with one domain that appears to belong to the most innovative parts of grammar, namely that of adjectival intensifiers. Looking in more detail into the nature and the use of such intensifiers in one particular language, which is German, the paper aims to show that intensifiers in particular and hyperbolic language in general are a culture-dependent phenomenon, and that their study can offer new insights into the mechanism underlying the nature of grammatical change.

STUF – Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung, Akademie Verlag

Print ISSN: 0942-2919
Volume: 59, 04/2006
Pages: 350 - 369

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