Degree modifiers, degree words or intensifiers are linguistic elements which convey the degree or the exact value of the quality expressed by the item they modify. They are typically adverbs, as in very hot, really interesting, greatly appreciate or completely absurd, but adjectives may also fulfil this function, as in utter nonsense. As noted by Bolinger (1972: 18), degree words offer a picture of ‘fevered invention’, and without any doubt constitute one of the major areas of grammatical change and renewal in English (Brinton & Arnovik 2006: 441), especially from the Early Modern English period onwards (Peters 1993). It is therefore no surprise that degree modifiers have attracted so much scholarly attention from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. Pioneering studies, such as those by Stoffel (1901), Borst (1902) and Fettig (1934), provide comprehensive inventories of intensifying adverbs in both modern and earlier English, as well as valuable insights into how they originated. In the last decade, however, intensifiers have become the object of renewed interest; this can be attributed in part to the development of computerized corpora, and also to advances in theoretical linguistics, more specifically in the study of semantic change and of grammaticalization processes. This renewed interest has focused, for example, on the individual histories of particular degree items as seen from the perspective of grammaticalization, on the competition of different intensifiers within a given period and across time, and on their distribution across different social groups, varieties or registers.

This article offers a description of the sources associated with the necessities expressed by have to and must in the ICE-GB corpus. It provides detailed comments on semantic and pragmatic features of the different sources, which are shown to be more diverse than has previously been claimed. The corpus analysis proves that the traditional distinction in meaning between so-called ‘objective’ have to and ‘subjective’ must is not as outspoken as is assumed, and therefore results in a more accurate description of the similarities and differences in meaning between the two modal markers.

Many English adjectives form the comparative in two ways, so that, for instance, prouder occurs alongside more proud. The availability of several forms raises the general questions of when and why speakers choose one variant over the other. The aim of this article is to identify factors of language structure and language use that underlie the comparative alternation and to determine their relative strengths on the basis of data from the BNC through a logistic regression analysis. The results suggest that the alternation is primarily governed by phonological factors, but that syntax and frequency of usage are of importance as well.

The nature and behaviour of complex and compound adverbs (e.g. very much, heretofore, anyway) has not received much scholarly attention in recent years. In the case of very much, for instance, recent literature (e.g. Dixon 2005) considers it a clause-internal adverb which typically modifies phrasal constituents (e.g. I liked the present very much; very much alive). The latter claim, however, appears to clash with previous observations (cf. Bolinger 1972) on the growing scope of the adverb in Present-day English. Through a corpus-based diachronic study (1500–present day), the present article unearths a number of environments where very much does not seem to fit neatly within the functional classifications that it has been assigned to in recent literature and standard grammars of English. It suggests that, from the Late Modern English period onwards (1800–), very much seems to have been developing sentence modifier functions, hence moving along Traugott's (1995) Internal Adverb > Sentence Adverb > Discourse Particle cline.

This contribution provides a corpus-based investigation of the history of adjectival resultative constructions (RCs), e.g. He wiped the table clean, with special reference to Old English and Middle English. The article first briefly discusses some of the parameters relevant to a synchronic analysis of RCs, namely causativity, causality and force-dynamics, as well as the distinction between adjectival and adverbial RCs (collectively referred to as ARCs since the two types cannot always be differentiated diachronically). The article then shows that the diachronic data point to an expansion of the ARC from very specific instantiations, involving a limited set of verbs and adjectives/adverbs (i.e. the washing and cutting scenarios), to progressively more general types (which, however, set up a coherent network of analogical extensions). It is observed that this evolutionary path correlates with the metaphorical interpretation of actions as forces and the emergence of ‘proper’ causative examples, i.e. examples where the verb only symbolises the causing subevent in the causal chain evoked by the RC. Further, it is argued that this investigation highlights the importance of the usage-based model in linguistic analysis.

Prefixes attached to adjectives/adverbs which are functionally equivalent to booster adverbs, i.e. booster prefixes, are frequent in both Present-day German and Old English. Among the Old English booster prefixes, whose inventory is here discussed in a first survey, for- is by far the most frequent, with respect to both types and tokens. In a more detailed analysis, the study investigates the Old English roots of ME forsooth(e), an emphasizer which became highly frequent at the beginning of Middle English. Forsooth is commonly considered to be a univerbated and lexicalized form of an Old English prepositional phrase for soþ ‘for truth’ (comparable to PDE indeed (< ‘in the deed’) or in fact). Yet analyses of the inventory of booster prefixes in Old English and the booster prefix for- in particular show that an alternative etymology may be suggested: Old English for soþ can also be analysed as the (endingless) accusative singular neuter of the adjective forsoþ ‘very true’.

This article examines the use of three gerund constructions in Middle and Early Modern English on the basis of corpus data covering the period 1250–1640. The constructions examined are verbal gerunds (eating the apple), bare nominal gerunds (eating of the apple), and definite nominal gerunds (the eating of the apple). It is argued that the success of verbal gerunds in the history of English can only be understood against the background of the interaction with their nominal counterparts. An analysis is offered of how the system of gerund constructions is functionally organised, comparing discourse-functional behaviour, distribution, and internal syntax across the three gerund types. It is shown that verbal gerunds closely resemble bare nominal gerunds in terms of discourse-functional behaviour and distribution, but are syntactically more flexible. As a result, verbal gerunds could replace bare nominal gerunds, copying their function but adding syntactic flexibility. By contrast, definite nominal gerunds, being functionally distinct from the other two types, developed a number of specialised uses, which ensured their survival. These conclusions throw light on issues of functional motivation in the development of the English gerund. Historical change is seen to be grounded in synchronic functional organisation. At the same time, it is shown that the only existing explanation for the rise of verbal gerunds (attributing their success to their ability to combine with prepositions) can only be partly correct.

The frication of the voiceless plosives /p, t, k/ in word-final intervocalic position in Dublin and Middlesbrough English is examined in controlled data, and the acoustic characteristics of fricated realisations of /t/ are compared with other fricatives. The findings are that /t/ is not the only plosive to be fricated in the data sample, but does appear to differ from other plosives in terms of the regularity of frication and its nongradient character for some subjects. The realisation of fricated /t/ at both localities differs from that of other fricatives, and is probably perceptually distinct from other fricative contrasts at each locality, but is not identical across the two localities. On the basis of data presented here, it appears unlikely that fricated /t/ in Middlesbrough English is a direct transfer effect from the language of Irish immigrants to Middlesbrough.

The article presents a study of the process of gender change in the thirteenth-century Southwest Midlands, based on twenty texts localized in this area. The assumption is that a study limited to a single text community would give a better view of the patterns of change than studies spanning a wide chronological and/or geographical range. It is suggested that the system of pronominal gender assignment went through a process of semantically based reorganization during this period, and that the resulting patterns are most usefully described using the model of a hierarchy or continuum of individuation (Dahl 1999a: 99; Siemund 2008: 140). The gender assignment of individual nouns is found to be remarkably regular, and the material seems to give no reason to assume a period of confusion between the Old and postmedieval English systems of gender assignment.

In this article we address a hitherto unstudied causal conjunction in English, seeing as though. Occurring predominantly in informal registers, the conjunction is typically used to introduce information which the speaker takes to be self-evidently true and on whose basis some further comment, or query, is made. Drawing on data derived from internet searches we draw up a semantic profile of the expression in comparison and contrast with other reason connectives, namely, seeing (that) and since. The data suggest that seeing as though is associated with highly subjective construals of the reason relation. We also address the internal structure of the expression. The use of seeing in a reason conjunction is traced to a common conceptual metaphor, whereby knowing is seeing. More puzzling is the occurrence of as though. While rejecting the possibility of a compositional analysis of the expression, we note that as though is only one of a number of items which can occur with causal seeing. These items have to do with the appearance of things and are in fact able to occur as complementizers after predicates of seeming and appearing. To this extent, as though is consistent with the subjectivity associated with the complex conjunction. In the course of our investigation, we also document the extraordinary proliferation of reason connectives that involve lexical items such as seeing, as, though, and several others, and suggest that this exuberance of new forms may not be unrelated to the subjectivity inherent in the construal of causal relations.

Using data retrieved from a variety of diachronic corpora and the OED quotation database, this diachronic study sheds light on the origin and development of the degree function of a low-frequency intensifier, English downright, both as an adverb (it's downright rude) and as a reinforcing adjective (downright nonsense). The history of downright illustrates the interplay between lexicalization and grammaticalization in the evolution of a single item and provides a good example of the crucial role of context and inferencing in semantic change, and of two different trajectories in the development of intensifiers (adjunct > degree modifier, and descriptive adjective > affective adjective > intensifier).

This article investigates t-to-r in West Yorkshire (WY) English and traces its course from a productive process in the nineteenth century to a lexically restricted fossil in contemporary WY. Nineteenth-century sources suggest that by the end of that century this process was already in decline. During the course of the twentieth century t-glottalling became a feature of the variety and so this article explores the possibility that as the frequency of use of t-glottalling increased, this would quickly overshadow t-to-r usage. Paradoxically, frequency of use is also responsible for the t-to-r phenomenon manifested today. More specifically, t-to-r remains in a small group of frequent words which are related by phonological shape. As a consequence of their frequency and shape, they have lexical strength and this is why a t-to-r fossil is maintained in WY today.

While the formation of deadjectival adjuncts by means of -ly suffixation is regular in the mainstream varieties of English today (they sing Adj-ly), that of intensifying word modifiers is much less so (they sing Adj-ly/Ø well). Both categories are typically more variable in many social and regional varieties, in which zero-form adverbs dominate. This article studies the extent to which grammatical and social conditioning played a role in the choice of the form of deadjectival intensifiers between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, before the era of normative grammar. The results indicate that some of the trends of social embedding identified in Present-day English can indeed be observed in the past, but also that the -ly suffix was clearly less grammaticalized four hundred years ago than it is today.

In this article we make a case for recognizing deictification as a type of grammaticalization and semantic shift in the NP analogous to auxiliarization in the VP. The specific analogy we point out is between lexical verbs that grammaticalize into secondary auxiliaries bound by the finite, as in is going to, has to + verb, and lexically full adjectives that grammaticalize into postdeterminers bound by the primary determiner, as in a different, the same + noun. We present five case studies of the development of postdeterminer meanings, based on the analysis of diachronic and synchronic data. The adjectives studied are opposite, complete, old, regular and necessary, whose postdeterminer uses relate to the basic deictic systems of space, quantity, time and modality. Our analysis of the data shows that the mechanism of secondary deictification can be given a unified characterization as the semantic shift by which a general relation expressed by the adjective is given a subjective reference point in or relative to the speech event.

Kiparsky (1979) proposes that the relative prominence contours of feet are preserved under morphological embedding, e.g. sènsátional → sĕnsàtionálity; àntícipate → ăntìcipátion. Kiparsky's opponents point out the existence of exceptions to such relative prominence preservation, e.g. ìnférior → ìnfĕriórity~ĭnfèriórity. In this article, it is shown that relative prominence preservation is a gradient phenomenon, which is probabilistically predicted by word frequency. This observation necessitates the rejection of the phonological cycle as the mechanism for handling relative prominence preservation – the phonological cycle predicts that relative prominence preservation should be consistently successful. In particular, it is proposed, following Bermúdez-Otero & McMahon (2006) and Bermúdez-Otero (in preparation), that the phonological cycle which applies internal to stratum one in models of Lexical Phonology should be rejected, and replaced by the mechanism of ‘fake cyclicity’. Through its resemblance to the dual-route model of lexical access, fake cyclicity can capture the probabilistic nature of relative prominence preservation.

This article challenges the widespread view that degree is a grammatical phenomenon characteristic of certain types of word classes and, instead, argues that degree is pervasive in language and may be associated with most meanings. The main aim of the article is to discuss the results of a number of corpus investigations and experiments of degree meanings in general and of the modification of degree in particular, and to accommodate these results in a general and dynamic model of Lexical Meaning as Ontologies and Construals (LOC; Paradis 2005). The claims are that (i) degree is a boundedness configuration in conceptual space; (ii) degree modifiers operate on the degree structure of the meanings to which they apply through a construal of contextually motivated zone activation within conventionalized senses; (iii) nonconventionalized degree readings of form–meaning pairings are invoked through implication by means of construals of metonymization between senses; and (iv) this process of metonymization is the mechanism through which change may or may not take place.

In this article I describe the semantic and syntactic development of the moderator rather from Old to Present-day English using a variationist approach. Rather originates in an Old English comparative adverb indicating speed, and hence time, but the loss of the indication of speed and movement can already be traced in the Old English period. In Middle English the ‘preferential’ senses of rather (e.g. the type ‘I would rather do X than Y’) become more common than the temporal senses. This contrastive meaning constitutes the unmarked use of rather in Early Modern English, but it gradually weakens in the course of the Modern English period. The moderator use becomes popular in the second half of the eighteenth century. The semantic development outlined above goes hand in hand with a syntactic development from an original adjunct into a subjunct and conjunct, and finally into a modifier of adjectives and adverbs.