2020-01-14
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A crucial factor in explaining the independent use of intensifiers is the collocation patterns of the dependent use. Different lexical items can have diverse collocation patterns. This diversity is realized at at least two levels:
1) the preference for different word forms. According to Kennedy G. 76-78 percent of the adjectives co-occurring with the adverb completely have an -ed suffix [24, 155];
2) the preference for different semantic association patterns, commonly known as semantic prosodies and semantic preferences [31; 25; 31].
This subchapter mainly is concerned with the notion of semantic preference.
According to Stubbs, semantic preference deals with the relation between a lemma or word-form and a set of semantically related words [34, 65]. With regard to the semantic preference of amplifiers, researchers who have looked at various types of British English data seem to be, in spirit, in agreement with Quirk R. that amplifiers can equally co-occur with both affirmative and negative terms [29]. Partington offers the following observation: a subset of amplifying intensifiers includes absolutely, perfectly, entirely, completely, thoroughly, totally and utterly. The first of these, absolutely, displays a distinct semantic preference in collocating with items which have a strong or superlative sense: among its significant collocates (i.e. those which co-occur with the keyword three times or more) in the Cobuild corpus were: delighted, enchanting, splendid, preposterous, appalling, intolerable. There appears to be an even balance between favourable and unfavourable items [27, 146]. This preference is well documented in modern corpus-based dictionaries: absolutely can be used to add force to a strong adjective [40].
It leads the author to conclude that absolutely has no strong preferences with regard to favorable or unfavorable semantic meanings in its collocates, and the only significant semantic pattern is that absolutely prefers superlative and hyperbolic expressions. Similarly, it is believed that absolutely tends to be associated with adjectives that are used hyperbolically (e.g., fabulous, marvelous, fantastic, brilliant, filthy, freezing); the adjectives have both positive (wonderful) and negative (disgusting) associations [24, 112]. However, even though it is true that both positive and negative associations are possible, positive cases outnumber negative ones by a large margin (Table 4).
