Intensifiers in English and German: A Comparison

by Peter Siemund (Editor)

Overview

This book deals with expressions like English myself, yourself, himself and so on, and German selbst from a perspective of language comparison. It is the first book-length study of intensifiers ever written. The study investigates the syntax and semantics of these expressions and provides a thorough account of a much neglected grammatical domain. Given that the approach is both descriptive and analytic, the book will be of interest to linguists, grammar writers and teachers of English and German alike.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415217132
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	11/25/1999
Series:	Routledge Studies in Germanic Linguistics , #6
Pages:	294
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1.1 Background 1.2 Three uses of intensifiers 1.3 Outline and objectives 2. The Syntax of Intensifiers - Overview 2.1 The three uses of intensifiers 2.2 Intensifiers as focus particles 2.3 Related expressions 2.4 Previous analyses 2.5 Historical development 3. Adnominal Intensifiers 3.1 Adnominal SELF - overt heads 3.1.1 ANS - the NP-Adjunct 3.1.2 Syntactic restrictions 3.2 Adnominal SELF - covert heads 3.3 ANS in role reversal structures 4. Adverbal intensifiers 4.1 AVS - The VP-Adjunct 4.2 AVS as an adverb 4.3 Syntactic restrictions 4.3.1 Passivisation and passives 4.3.2 Topicalisation 4.3.3 Scope bearing elements 4.3.4 Inclusive versus exclusive AVS 5. The Meaning of Intensifiers - Overview 5.1 Three approaches to intensifiers 5.2 The three uses of intensifiers 6. Adnominal Intensifiers 6.1 Scalar and non-scalar approaches 6.2 Possible instantiations of centre and periphery 6.3 Unique identifiability 6.4 ANS in role reversal structures 7. Adverbal Inclusive Intensifiers 7.1 Adverbal inclusive versus adnominal SELF 7.2 Repeatability and transferability 7.3 Contextual conditions 7.4 Comparison: inclusive AVS versus also 7.5 Inclusive AVS as ANS plus also 7.6 Scalar analyses 7.7 Presupposition: negative proposition 7.8 Central representative theory 8. Adverbal exclusive intensifiers 8.1 Basic properties 8.2 Responsibility, benefit and suffering 8.3 Agentivity 8.4 Centrality in situation 9. Summary

Editorial Reviews

'...a stimulating read...full of carefully contextualized examples...I would recommend it not only to semanticists interested in focus particles and discourse structure, but also - strongly - to syntacticians, who will find here a goldmine of fascinating semantic and distributional material to feed their own reflection on clause structure.' - Anne Zribi-Hertz , ELL 2001

From the Publisher