Abstrakt: | The paper discusses the intensifying functions of some lexical units derived
from adverbs in a cross-linguistic Polish-Slovak perspective. The expression of intensification in
Polish and Slovak has not been widely explored, which is why the present paper aims to point out
a few aspects of this phenomenon in two closely related Slavic languages, which may contribute
to help fill this gap. Intensification is without doubt a very interesting, pervasive and complex
phenomenon in linguistics and is understood here as the process of quantitative change of
a feature, activity or state. That change refers to the increase and decrease in intensity of a feature/
activity/state according to an approved canon. The components of the category of intensification
are therefore both, intensifying and deintensifying. Therefore, it is also postulated that a class of
intensifiers/deintensifiers should be distinguished as means of intensification/deintensification.
Intensifiers have also been a long fruitful topic of investigation in sociolinguistic research: on one
hand intensification systems are unstable and tend to change rapidly in any speech community
and on the other, the use of intensifiers tends to vary across demographic categories, especially
age and gender. Intensification can also be researched due to ‘delexicalization’, which is defined
as the reduction of the independent lexical contents of a word, or group of words, so that it
comes to fulfil a particular function – the original meaning of the word is gradually lost as it
evolves into a marker of intensification. The paper aims also to show that the more delexicalized
an intensifier becomes, the more it will lose its lexical restrictions and increase in frequency.
Through frequency of use and over time, intensifiers tend to lose their intensifying force and the
renewal process occurs. This process promotes other adverbs, be they newly created adverbs or
already existing ones, to the rank of intensifiers – it seems that the class of intensifiers may be an
open class. The undertaken analysis has shown that there are a number of aspects which can be
considered while describing intensifiers. |