Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers

Well weird, right dodgy,verystrange,really cool:Layering and recycling in English intensifiers

R I K A I T O

Department of Asian StudiesSt. Olaf College

1520 St. Olaf Ave.Northfield, MN 55057

[email protected]

S A L I T A G L I A M O N T E

Department of LinguisticsUniversity of Toronto130 St George Street

Toronto, Ont. M5S [email protected]

A B S T R A C T

This article examines variable usage of intensifiers in a corpus from a so-cially and generationally stratified community. Using multivariate analyses,the authors assess the direction of effect, significance, and relative impor-tance of conditioning factors in apparent time. Of 4,019 adjectival heads,24% were intensified, and there is an increase in intensification across gen-erations. Earlier forms (e.g.right andwell) do not fade away but coexistwith newer items. The most frequent intensifiers, however, are shifting rap-idly. Very is most common, but only among the older speakers. In contrast,really increases dramatically among the youngest generation; however, theeffects of education and sex must be disentangled. The results confirm thatvariation in intensifier use is a strong indicator of shifting norms and prac-tices in a speech community. Studying such actively changing features canmake an important contribution to understanding linguistic change as wellas to discovering current trends in contemporary English. (Intensifiers, de-lexicalization, gender difference,very, really, British English.)*

I N T R O D U C T I O N

The most rapid and the most interesting semantic developments in linguistic changeare said to occur with intensifiers (Quirk et al. 1985:590; Peters 1994:269). Thisarea of grammar is always undergoing meaning shifts (Stoffel 1901:2), partlybecause of “speaker’s desire to be ‘original’, to demonstrate their verbal skills,and to capture the attention of their audience” (Peters 1994:271).

Language in Society32, 257–279. Printed in the United States of AmericaDOI: 10.10170S0047404503322055

© 2003 Cambridge University Press 0047-4045003 $12.00 257

The first relevant question that arises is: What is an intensifier? There are twotypes – intensives and downtoners (e.g. Stoffel 1901, Quirk et al. 1985). In thisarticle, we restrict ourselves to those of the first type, in part because they aremore frequent (Mustanoja 1960:316), but also because, we believe, they are moreinteresting. The terminology referring to these types of adverbs is not entirelyuniform among scholars. Stoffel 1901 calls them “intensive adverbs.” Bolinger(1972:18) refers to them as “degree words” without separating them from down-toners. In the terminology of Quirk et al. (1985:567), they are “amplifiers.” Here,we simply refer to them as “intensifiers” – those adverbs that maximize or boostmeaning. In other words, these are adverbs that scale a quality up (Bolinger1972:17), as in (1) and (2):

(1) Maximizers:a. But during the week it wasabsolutelydead. (YRK0d0F020)1

b. I mean the chocolate making iscompletelydifferent. (YRK020M 062)c. They wereextremely good. (YRK0M 0M 062)d. He had aperfectly lovely name. Ernest-Gordon was his name. (YRK050F062)

(2) Boosters:a. York’s actually areally really good University. (YRK0%0M 017)b. They’revery nice, andvery catholic [laughs]. (YRK0R0F041)c. He had anawful big sheep– an awful lot of sheep. (YRK050M 030)d. Oh we wereblemmin’ terrified. (YRK0s0M 050)e. That most people would think, that’sdeadnaff. (YRK0H0M 024)f. When I go up it wasright slow and everything. (YRK0W0F020)g. She wasterribly distressed during that year. (YRK0Q0F063)h. Yeah it’swell weird. (YRK010F034)

Intensifiers are also discussed by a number of other scholars, including Labov1985, Partington 1993, and Peters 1994, all of whom attribute to intensifiers a keyrole in the social and emotional expression of speakers. Two key characteristicsof intensifiers are (i) versatility and color, which Bolinger (1972:18) refers to asthe result of “fevered invention”; and (ii) their capacity for rapid change and therecycling of different forms. These attributes are reflected in the following remarks:

Versatility and color:

Degree words afford a picture of fevered invention and competition that wouldbe hard to come by elsewhere, for in their nature they are unsettled. (Bolinger1972:18)

. . . a vehicle for impressing, praising, persuading, insulting, and generally in-fluencing the listener’s reception of the message. (Partington 1993:178)

Constant change:

The process is always going on, so that new words are in constant requisition,because the old ones are felt to be inadequate. (Stoffel 1901:2)

R I K A I T O & S A L I TA G L I A M O N T E

258 Language in Society32:2 (2003)

When the strong word is used on light occasion its strength begins to be dis-sipated, and when the fitting moment for it actually arrives it will no longerserve; familiarity has bred contempt in the hearer, and one must begin again tofind a new ‘strong word’. (Robertson 1954:251)

. . . as each newcomer has appeared on the scene it has elbowed the other aside.The old favorites do not vanish but retreat to islands bounded by restrictions . . .and the newcomer is never fully successful and extends its territory only so far.(Bolinger 1972:18)

One question that arises is: How does this “fevered invention” amid the vig-orous ebb and slow of “constant requisition” happen? The next section summa-rizes the diachronic development of intensifiers at earlier stages of English. Itreveals that competition among intensifiers has been common from as far back asOld English.

H I S T O R I C A L T R A J E C T O R Y

The fact that this area of the language changes quite fast can be established easilyby going to historical documents from earlier stages of English. For example,according to Mustanoja (1960:319–27),swiþe, which originally meant simply‘strong’, came to mean ‘extremely’ or ‘very’, and it became the most popularintensifier in Old and Early Middle English, as in (3a). After the mid-13th cen-tury, however, its popularity shifted to other intensifying adverbs, such aswell,full, andright, as in (3b–d).

(3) a. maydenswiþe fayr‘maiden very fair’(Havelok 111, cited in Mustanoja 1960:325)

b. Seo leo, þeah hiowel tam se, . . . heo forZit sona hire niwan taman.‘The lioness, although she is very tame . . . she forgets soon her recent tameness.’(c 888 K. Ælfred Boeth. xxv,OED vol. 12 p.285)

c. Ful faire and fetisly‘very fairly and prettily’(Ch.CT A Prol. 119, 124, cited in Mustanoja 1960:319–20)

d. (Laud), Ye diddyn hym vnder lok and sele That he awey shuld not stele But ye hym myssidright sone.‘You put him under lock and seal, (so) that he away should not steal, but you him missedvery recently.’(c 1450 Cursor M. 17413,OED vol. 8 p.675)

A summary of the historical trajectory of these changes is shown in Table 1.Mustanoja reports that there are also regional differences in the choice of

intensifiers from early on. For example, in the South and South Midlands ofEngland,well became the most common intensifier after the middle of the 13thcentury, whenswiþe(or swithe) lost its popularity. By the mid-14th century,wellgives way tofull andright. In contrast, in the North and the North Midlands,fullis the prevailing intensifier from mid-13th century. Not until a century later doesit gradually spread over the rest of the country (Mustanoja 1960:319).

L AY E R I N G A N D R E C Y C L I N G I N E N G L I S H I N T E N S I F I E R S

Language in Society32:2 (2003) 259

Ongoing renewal of popular intensifiers continues in the 15th century.Full isstill popular, but the competitorright starts to take over (Mustanoja 1960:323–24). Butright, too, competes withveryin the 16th century, and latter eclipses theother popular intensifiers (Mustanoja 1960:327).

Along with these rather dramatic shifts from one century to another, at leastfrom the mid-18th century intensifiers become particularly associated with women.For example, Lord Chesterfield (c. 1694–1773), one of the most influential pol-iticians at that time, writes in 1754 that his “fair countrywomen” have extendedthe wordvastlyto a generalized intensifier function. Chesterfield reports havingheard a woman describe a very small gold snuff-box as “vastlypretty, because itis sovastlylittle” (cited in Jespersen 1922:249–50).

Later, Stoffel (1901:101) reports that ladies are very fond of using such ex-pressions asHe issocharming!,It is so lovely, and refers to these as a “purelyfeminine expression.” Notice from these examples, however, that even thoughthe intensifier has changed – firstvastly, thenso– the association with womenpersists. Stoffel goes so far as to suggest not only that women use these expres-sions frequently, that they actuallydeveloped the intensive use of the innova-tion. His explanation is that “ladies are notoriously fond of hyperbole” (Stoffel1901:101); yet he also attributes this preference to children, and what he refers toas “ladies’ men” (102).

Although Stoffel considers the use of intensifiers characteristic of women, it isJespersen (1922:250) who makes the explicit link to the role of women in lan-guage change. He states that it is the women who will lead when intensifierschange: “The fondness of women for hyperbole will very often lead the fashionwith regard to adverbs of intensity” (Jespersen 1922:250).

Perhaps surprisingly, given the association with women, the use of intensifiersis also associated with colloquial usage and nonstandard varieties. Stoffel ob-serves that they are “exceedingly numerous” in “vulgar parlance and in the dia-lects” (1901:122). Later, Fries (1940:204–5) divides a cohort of intensifiers usedin American English into “Standard” as opposed to “Vulgar” forms, withvery



attributed to “Standard” English and a whole host of others – includingpretty,real andso– relegated to “Vulgar” English.

Finally, the use of intensifiers is said to signal ingroup membership, againsubject to changing norms. Thus, Peters says:

When the use of a particular booster spreads to other groups in the speechcommunity, the word loses its function of group identification, and the linguis-tic “trend-setters” will then normally put a new group-symbol into circulation.Such shibboleths thus tend to change rapidly; they are subject to fashion.(1994:271)

According to Partington (1993:180) “in this sea of change, processes of ex-pansion and contraction are occurring all the time,” which was also observedearlier by Bolinger, as described above.

Given this backdrop, it is not at all surprising to find in spoken data heartyvariability in the use of intensifiers (see 1–2), even in the same speaker in thesame stretch of discourse, as in (4), undoubtedly reflecting the coexistence ofolder and newer layers in the process of change.

(4) a. Apparently I gave him aright dirty look and he was going out with somebody at the timeand I gave him areally dirty look (YRK0O0F030)

b. It wasvery unusual . . . It wasreal unusual. (YRK0c0F070)c. . . . and one of them feel down . . . onedead expensive plate,really expensive.

(YRK 0H0N024)

Thus, another important question is: What are the linguistic mechanisms throughwhich this rapid and colorful recyling of forms happens? According to somecommentators, this phenomenon reflects one of the general processes of gram-maticalization, namely “delexicalization” (Sinclair 1992; Partington 1993:183).Delexicalization is defined as “the reduction of the independent lexical content ofa word, or group of words, so that it comes to fulfil a particular function” (Par-tington 1993:183). In the case of intensifiers, a given word starts out as a lexicalitem with semantic context; often it is a word that comments on speakers’ assess-ments of truth conditions or vouches for the sincerity of their words. Partingtonrefers to this asmodal use (1993:181).Aprime example isvery, which originallymeant ‘true’ or ‘real’, as in (5a). However, this original sense may weaken overtime so that the word is also used to convey emphasis, as in (5b). Partington(1993:181) argues that the link between modality and intensification “is a shortstep from averring truth to being emphatic about it.” Part of this development atthe early stage may also be likened to the type of pragmatic strengthening dis-cussed by Traugott & König 1991. Another step in this process occurs when theword comes to be used with attributive adjectives, as in (5c). Then, with frequentoccurrences in this syntactic position, the word starts to develop into an adverb(Mustanoja 1960:326). The final stage is reached in examples such as (5d), wherevery is used with predicative adjectives to convey simple intensification and theoriginal lexical meaning of ‘truth’ is gone:



(5) a. The compyler here-of shuld translatveray so holy a story. (1485OEDvol 14:569, cited inPartington 1993:181)

b. Forverray feere so wolde hir herte quake. (CT.F Fkl. 860)c. He was averray parfit gentil knyght. (Ch. CT A Prol. 72)d. He was sike . . . and wasverray contrite and sorwful in his herte. (Trev. Hidg. VI 93)

(all cited in Mustanoja 1960: 326)

Partington (1993:182) observes that this modal-to-intensifier shift is not onlya diachronic but also a synchronic phenomenon. Whilereally in (6a–b) maintainsits modal use reading, when it is used as sentence adverb, in sub-modifying po-sition, as in (6c), the item is far more likely to be perceived as intensifying:

(6) a. Really, I could hear her thinking.b. Aw, don’t rub it in. Ah fell awfu’. I doreally.c. When the horsetail isreally hot, wrap it up . . .

(All cited in Partington 1993:182)

This scenario of dramatic and multifaceted variation and change presents aninteresting area of study. First, because of the relatively rapid rate of change andongoing attestations of variability, the distribution of intensifiers in apparent timemay shed light on the mechanisms of the delexicalization process. Second, be-cause the development of intensifiers is particularly sensitive to factors such assex (Stoffel 1901; Jespersen 1922) and group membership (Stoffel 1901, Peters1994), extralinguistic distribution patterns can be used to track the interrelation-ship between linguistic and social factors in language change. This leads us to aset of plausible hypotheses that can be tested:

(a) Correlation of intensifiers with particular linguistic contexts can be relatedwith their degree of delexicalization, as discussed by Partington (1993) (and Mus-tanoja 1960).

(b) Correlation of intensifiers with social factors can be taken to tap into thesocial evaluation of the particular intensifier within the community.

(c) Through the examination of (a) and (b), we may be able to track the inter-relationship between linguistic and social factors in language change.

D AT A A N D M E T H O D S

We now systematically examine variable usage of intensification in a socially andgenerationally stratified corpus from the indigenous population of a single com-munity, the city of York in the northeast of England. The population of the city upto the present century has been largely “northern,” with by far the largest groupof in-migrants from the immediate environs (northeast England and Yorkshire)(Armstrong 1974). For these reasons, York has retained a somewhat conservativecharacter while at the same time representing a relatively standard northern va-riety of British English (Tagliamonte 1998). Thus, the York English corpus pro-vides an excellent site for examining language variation and locally based changein a geographical context where variability in intensifiers has undoubtedly ex-



isted for centuries – a reflection of the layering and recycling of intensifiers out-lined in Table 1.

For this study, we used a sub-sample of 48 speakers from the corpus, stratifiedby age and sex, as outlined in Table 2.

Circumscribing the variable context

One of the problems in dealing with intensifiers in an accountable, quantitativeway is that of circumscribing the variable context. It is an easy task to find theintensifiers themselves, but difficult, if not impossible, to find where they couldhave occurred but did not. In other words, where are the zeros?

In a large-scale study of the collocation of adverbs of degree in contemporarywritten British and American English,2 Bäcklund (1973:279) discovered that thevast majority of intensifiers – 72% – were used with adjectival heads, as they wereearlier in (1), (2), and (4). Using this as a baseline, our analysis is restricted to ad-jectival heads, and of these, only in constructions that could possibly be modifiedby intensifiers. This enables us to approach the use of intensifiers and their lexicalforms with a consistent denominator: all adjectives. Thus, a token with adjectivehard, as in (7a), is included, but not with adverbhard, as in (7b). As we definedthem earlier, tokens with downtoners are also excluded, as in (7c–e).3

(7) a. It’s really hard making any money out of it. (YRK0h0F026)b. I workedÀ hard at my A-levels. (YRK0d0F020)c. It was okay. . .bit of a dump really. It’s not really. It’s actuallyquitegood. (YRK0%0M 017)d. Are you warmenough, love? (YRK0b0F082)e. Well she wasa bit excited last week. (YRK0z0F051)

Contexts that do not permit intensifiers are also excluded. Thus, a token suchas (8a), in which the speaker talks about akind of teacher and not adegree ofscariness, is not included. Similarly, (8b) is excluded because the degree of new-ness is irrelevant:

(8) a. [interviewer] You didn’t have any really scary teachers. [008] Oh– God yeah. Tell me.Every school’s got ascaryone. We used to have one. (YRK0h0F026)

b. The circuit Churches have done this twenties to thirties group so you know we’re involvedin that, which is good. So that’s once a month we can get out and meetnewfriends and thatso. (YRK0O0F031)

TABLE 2. Sub-sample of the York EnglishCorpus (Tagliamonte 1998).

Male Female Total

17–34 8 8 1635–65 8 8 16661 8 8 16

Total 24 24 48



Sentence constructions that do not permit intensifier use (e.g. comparatives0superlatives and other constructions), as in (9a–b), were also excluded, as wereconstructions involving the lexical itemstooandsowhen their function was otherthan intensification, as in (9c–d):

(9) a. Well they’remoresafer there than you are on road nowadays aren’t you? (YRK0y0M 023)b. And thebiggestmistake I ever made was leaving there to go to this other pig unit. (YRK0

50M 030)c. I used to have to have loads of water and then feelso ill that I just wanted to go home.

(YRYK 0d0F020)d. He was justtoo old to go in the forces. (YRK050F062)

Finally, our analysis focuses on affirmative tokens alone. Thus, negative con-texts such as (10a–c) were excluded. The rationale this behind is that intensifiersin this context do not express the “higher” degree in which we are interested. Forexample, (10a) does not mean the negation of being very big; instead, it meansthat the person is of moderate size, which is similar to the function of downtoner.However, tokens such as (10d) are included because the adjectival head is notimmediately under the scope of negation:

(10) a. Well no I was more like my Dad ’cos my Mum was small and little. Well I aren’tverybigmyself. [Interviewer] No you’re not, you’re not no. (YRK0k0F087)

b. Well it’s notsobad really. (YRK0d0F020)c. Um I’m not really sure but . . . (YRK0O0F031)d. And I didn’t have boyfriends forvery long. (YRK0z0F051)

The variable context thus defined provides a consistent vantage point fromwhich we can track the social evaluation and spread of individual lexical items, aswell as ensuring that this analysis can be replicated elsewhere. We now test forthe contribution of effects of age, sex, and educational level, as well as internalfactors implicated in the expansion to different types of adjectival heads anddifferent types of predication. By using multivariate analyses and the compara-tive method, we will assess the direction of effect, significance, and relative im-portance of these factors in apparent time.

R E S U L T S

Distributional analysis

Table 3 reveals that out of 4,019 adjectival heads, 24% were intensified. Whenspeaker age is taken into account, we observe an interesting pattern in apparenttime. Figure 1 shows that the frequency of intensification is gradually increasingfrom oldest to the youngest speakers.

However, an important consideration is to determinewhich intensifiers arebeing used. Table 4 shows that the frequency of intensifiers according to lexicalitems that occurred 10 times or more.4

Consistent with reports by Fries (1940:201) for contemporary American En-glish, and Bäcklund (1973:290) for both contemporary British and AmericanEnglish, very is “the most frequently used function word of degree” (Fries



1940:201). The data confirm this – 38% of all the intensifiers used in York are thelexical itemvery. Interestingly,very has been used as an intensifier in Englishsince the 15th century (Mustanoja 1960:327), so it has been holding its own forabout 500 years.

However, notice the intensifierreally. This intensifier vies for the highestfrequency position; it occurs 30% of the time in our data. The intensifier use ofreally is first attested in theOED in 1658, but in research by Peters 1994 it doesnot appear until the early 18th century. It is much less frequent thanvery inBäcklund’s (1973) study of contemporary written American and British English.More recently, Labov (1985:44) observes thatreally is “one of the most frequentmarkers of intensity in colloquial conversation” in American English. In BritishEnglish,really has not received much attention, but it is reported to be the mostcommon premodifier of adjectives among teenagers in London (Stenström 1999).This makes its frequency in York quite interesting.

TABLE 3. Overall distribution ofintensification (total N5 4,019).

Intensified À intensification

% N % N24 950 76 3069

figure 1: Overall distribution of intensification by age.



A full 69% of all the intensifiers in this corpus arevery and really. The re-maining 30% comprise a wide range of different intensifiers. Most can be pin-pointed to specific historical periods. Use of intensifiersogoes back to Old English(Mustanoja 1960:324), as in (11). Examples ofright, one of the most popularintensifiers in Middle English, are given in (12).Pretty (13) is first attested in1565 inOED, and Stoffel observes that its use for expressing a high degree is“contemporary usage” (1901:153).5 The well-known British intensifierbloody(14) has been in “colloquial use from the Restoration (1660–) to c. 1750” (OEDvol. 1, 933). These widely varying dates of origin reveal tremendous differencesin time depth for the origins of these intensifiers.

(11) a. Zif he us zeunnan wile, þæt we hineswagodne gretan moton. (Beowulf 347, cited inOED,vol. 9, 345)

b. They’ll die, the next one to come along just walks round them. Life’ssocheap. (YRK0#0M 075)

c. That’s why they’resoclose together! (YRK0R0F041)d. I wassoplacid. (YRK0%0M 017)

(12) a. He was natright fat. (Ch. CT A Prol. 288, cited by Mustanoja 1960:323)b. I think in my father’s days, they was brought upright strict weren’t they? (YRK0k0F087)c. It was aright old world place. (YRK0s0M 050)d. When I go up it wasright slow and everything. (YRK0W0F020)

(13) a. pretie hardie felow: vsed in derision. (1565cooper Thesaurus, Audaculus OEDvol. 8,1333)

b. But in winter it can bepretty rough. (YRK0L 0M 086)c. You know Yorkshire folk and that are usuallypretty blunt and that. (YRK0s0M 050)d. Well I’m pretty good at talking to people. (YRK0d0F020)

TABLE 4. Frequency of intensifiers bylexical item (N≥ 10).

Lexical identity % N

very 38.3 364really 30.2 287so 10.1 96absolutely 3.2 30pretty 3.2 30too 2.8 27that 2.7 26right 1.6 15totally 1.4 13completely 1.2 11bloody 1.2 11All other items 4.1 40Total 950



(14) a. Not without he will promise to bebloody drunk. (1676etherege Man of Modei. i.(1684), cited inOED vol. 1, 933)

b. I’m thinking “Well there’sbloody great big audience.” (YRK0S0M 040)c. What’s it like living here, is it alright? [059] Yeah,bloody freezing in winter! (YRK0*0

F023)d. She brought thisbloody great Mars bar with her. (YRK050M 030)

As the (b–d) examples in each set show, most of these intensifiers are used by allage groups in the city of York. Thus, the layering of old and relatively new formsappears to be a community-wide phenomenon.

We now turn to an analysis of the two main forms –really andvery– treatingthe three main age groups of the community as cohorts, as in Figure 2.

Here we observe a dramatic pattern in apparent time.Very is the most fre-quently used intensifier for speakers over 35, but it is declining rapidly among theunder-35-year-olds. In contrast,really is hardly ever used among the over-35-year-olds but is increasing in the youngest age group. This reveals a rapidly chang-ing situation in this community. Moreover, the locus of the changeover appears tobe between the middle-aged and youngest generations.

A question arises, however. How can it be that the lexical itemreally, which isfound in letters of the early 18th century, appears here to be suddenly expandingamong the under-35-year-olds in the community? The linguistic processes thatenable the delexicalization of words that become intensifiers do not just happenovernight. As we outlined earlier with the case ofveryin (5), this occurs througha step-by-step process from its original meaning of ‘true’ or ‘real’ to a final stagewhen it is used with predicative adjectives. While the actuation of such linguistic

figure 2: Distribution ofveryandreally by age.



change is beyond the scope of this paper, what we would like to consider now iswhether we can tap into the stages by which delexicalization happens in thelinguistic system. If it is happening in our data, we should be able to see it in thedistributional differences between the generations in York.

One way to do this is to examine collocation patterns. Partington (1993:183)argues that there is a direct correlation between delexicalization and collocationalbehavior: The more delexicalized an intensifier is, the more widely it collocates.6

In other words, certain intensifiers are highly collocated with a small set of spe-cific lexical items; others appear widely across a broad range of types. Partingtonsuggests that delexicalization and “width of collocation” are probably the samephenomenon (1993:183). For example,awfully is more advanced in terms ofdelexicalization because it collocates with modifiers having positive connota-tions (e.g.good, nice, andglad) as well as with those having negative ones (e.g.cruel andbad), whereasterribly shows slight degree of preference for negativeitems. Thus, he concludes that “terribly has gone a little less far along the road ofdelexicalisation” (Partington 1993:184). Similarly, the intensifierblazing, as in(15a), has a limited collocation pattern, such as with the adjectivehot. Badly(15b) easily collocates with adjectives having negative connotation, but the usebecomes questionable with positive ones (15c). This intensifier seems not to mod-ify adjectives such asbig, kind, or fast. Moreover,badlyseems to be restricted touse with adjectives derived from verbs with negative connotation (e.g.burnedandinjured), although it also goes withwrongas in (15d). Thus,badlywould bea “less grammaticalized” intensifier. In contrast,very is highly delexicalized be-cause it combines “very widely indeed and is also the intensifier with the leastindependent lexical content” (Partington 1993:183).

(15) a. It wasblazing hot summer-time. (YRK0¥0M 081)b. The house wasbadly damaged. (YRK070M 060)c. ? It wasbadlygood.d. He wasbadly wrong.

We can test this by systematically classifying the different adjectival heads andexamining the expansion ofreally over very across them in apparent time. Inorder to do this, we operationalized the model provided by Dixon 1977, whichdivides adjectives into eight groups, as illustrated in (16–23):7

Semantic category of adjective (Dixon 1977:31)(16) Dimension (e.g.big, large, little, small, long, short, wide, narrow, thick)

a. It was avery BIG office with offices off round about. (YRK0Q0F063)b. It was areal LONG, THIN bath as well. (YRK0V0M 053)

(17) Physical property (e.g.hard, soft, heavy, light, rough, smooth, hot, sweet)a. It was stillvery HOT way up in the nineties but you could bear it you know. (YRK050

F062)b. We had thesereally HEAVY rifles. (YRK 0H0M 024)

(18) Color (e.g.black, white, red)I was sometimesÀÀÀ WHITE from top to bottom, my eyebrows the lot,ÀÀÀ WHITE, . . . com-pletely WHITE. (YRK0†0M 054)



(19) Human propensity (e.g.jealous, happy, kind, clever, generous, gay, rude)a. He would sleep somewhere and let Brian’s sister,very very very POSH. Connie they

called her. (YRK0c0F070)b. She wasreally NASTY to him. (YRK010F034)

(20) Age (e.g.new, young, old)It was areally OLD building, and they wanted to build a new one . . . it was avery OLDrambling mess of a building. (YRK0Þ0M 037)

(21) Value (e.g.good, bad, proper, perfect, excellent, delicious, poor)a. And she died avery UNPLEASANT death. (YRK0V0M 053)b. It’s really really SPECUTACULAR. (YRK050F062)

(22) Speed (e.g.fast, quick, slow)a. And it wasvery QUICK at the end. (YRK0z0F051)b. When I go up it wasright SLOW and everything (YRK0W0F023)

(23) Position (e.g.right, left, near, far)a. And we werevery CLOSE. We were very close. (YRK0b0F082)b. I understand that because I wassoLATE in being born. (YRK010F034)

Figures 3, 4, and 5 depict the distribution ofreally andveryaccording to thesecategories for each age group respectively: the oldest generation, the middle gen-eration, and the youngest generation.

In Figure 3, the oldest generation, we observe thatreally hardly ever occurs.The most frequent intensifier and the most widespread through all categories isvery. We note, however, that the contexts wherereally occurs are the categories

figure 3: Distribution ofveryandreallyby type of the modified adjectives (661).



figure 4: Distribution of very and really by type of the modified adjectives(35–65).

figure 5: Distribution of very and really by type of the modified adjectives(17–34).



that are among the most common in the data: value, human propensity, dimen-sion, and physical property.

Figure 4 represents the middle generation. Here, each of these same categoriesnow has even greater use ofreally. However, its expansion in adjectives of phys-ical property, as in (24), is greatest.

(24) a. So I mean even in winter it’sreally really COLD. (YRK0w0F048)b. It’s quite surprising um, how– how– howreally TIGHT a community it is in its own way.

(YRK 0s0M 050)

In addition, another category, age, now has use ofreally where it did not have anybefore.

(25) It was areally OLD building, and they wanted to build a new one. (YRK0Þ0M 037)

Although the middle generation does not exhibit much greater frequency ofreally overall (3% for oldest generation and 4.2% for the middle generation, seeFigure 2), by comparing Figure 3 and Figure 4 we can now see that it has spreadinto additional adjectival types among this cohort.

Finally, Figure 5 shows that among the youngest generation, there is an expo-nential increase in use ofreally across nearly all categories. Moreover, there isspread to an additional category, color. In at least four (value, human propensity,dimension, and physical property), use ofreally is double that ofvery. In otherwords, in the middle generation we observe spread of the form, but only in theyoungest generation is there spread along with a leap in frequency. Thus, thespread (or diffusion) of an intensifier pre-dates an overall increase in use. Likegrammaticalization more generally, where an increase in frequency is often as-sociated with the development of grammatical status, these findings suggest thatthis tendency continues, perhaps increasingly, well after (see Bybee et al. 1994:8).

Another way to tap into the gradual delexicalization of intensifiers is to ex-amine their patterning according to function (Mustanoja 1960:326–27). As de-scribed earlier, the last stage in the development of intensifiervery is when itcomes to modify predicate adjectives. Extrapolating from these observations, useof intensifiers with predicate adjectives could be taken as evidence for a laterstage in the delexicalization process. Higher frequency of use with predicateadjectives over other contexts might reflect an even later development. We cantest for this is by examining the distribution of intensifiers according to whetherthey occurred with attributive adjectives (26) or with predicative adjectives (27):

(26) Attributive:a. But we’d been out in somevery bad weather. (YRK0L 0M 086)b. ’Cos he was areally really big tall guy. (YRK0%0M 017)

(27) Predicative:a. Once she’s got to know them she’svery very confident. (YRK0O0F031)b. Oh you werereally terrified. (YRK0v0F079)



Figures 6 and 7 show the distribution ofreally andveryaccording to this dis-tinction for each age group. These figures consistently show that intensifiersoccur far more frequently with predicate adjectives than with attributive adjec-tives. Moreover, this is consistent for all age groups. Thus, bothreally andvery

figure 6: Distribution ofveryby age and type of predication.

figure 7: Distribution ofreally by age and type of predication.



are well advanced: Both are used with predicate adjectives, and further, they areboth used more frequently in this context than with attributive adjectives. This isnot surprising, however, because both have been used in intensifier function forseveral hundred years – 500 years forvery, nearly 300 years forreally.

However, we can also see that the degree of difference between the two adverbtypes is far greater withvery than withreally. Moreover, notice that this is trueonly among the oldest generation. In the younger generation, forreally, the effectappears to be as robust as for all the generations withvery. In other words, thepoint at whichreally parallelsvery in terms of the operation of this constraint isprecisely in the generation wherereally not only expands in function, but alsoincreases in frequency.

In sum, the results from Figures 3–7 provide two pieces of evidence to supportthe fact thatvery and really represent different degrees of grammaticalization.Veryis further advanced. First, it collocates more widely (except in the youngestgeneration, wherereally has taken over; Figs. 3–5); and second, it has a strongerdifferentiation between predicate and attribute adjectives across all generations(Figs. 6 and 7).

Another bit of evidence for positing a different degree of grammaticalizationbetween these two intensifiers is with respect to the difference in their multifunc-tionality. The prime function ofveryin contemporary English is as intensifier, notwith its original meaning ‘true’ as in (28).8 Indeed, we examined ten randomlychosen speakers’use ofverywith frequencies ranging from seven tokens to morethan forty tokens per person, and we could not find even a single example ofverywith this reading. Subjectingreally to the same test, however, revealed that it stillretains its modal meaning ‘truly’, as in (29)9:

(28) It was thevery patient who called the ambulance.

(29) a. I loved it yes, Ireally did I loved it. (YRK0.M 091)b. I neverreally knew many cousins. (YRK0k0F087)c. It’s just like corporal punishmentreally. (YRK0h0F026)d. So I just have toreally try and sight read a bit and try and pitch myself. (YRK0H0M 034)

Moreover,really as modal is far more frequent among the oldest generationthan the youngest in our data. In order to show this, the two oldest speakers andthe two most frequent users ofreally from the youngest generation were chosen.Table 5 shows the distribution ofreally as intensifier and as modal by these fourspeakers. The oldest male speaker (91 years of age) had only one token ofreal,and it was an intensifier, but all of hisreally tokens had the modal reading. All ofthe really tokens of the oldest female speaker (87 years old) were modal. Incontrast, the frequency ofreally as intensifier among the youngest generation isfar greater (over 50%).

In sum, our contrastive analysis ofveryandreally has revealed a number ofimportant internal factors that condition their appearance. However, how signif-icant are they? Moreover, because the most widely cited influences on intensifier



use in the literature are external, will the internal factors remain significant whenthe external factors are treated simultaneously with them?

M U L T I VA R I AT E A N A L Y S I S

In the next section, we subject the incoming intensifierreally to an analysis thattreats both the internal and external factors simultaneously. In addition, becausethe generations in this community are highly differentiated according to intensi-fier use and patterning (Fig. 2), we also divide the data by age group. This enablesus to test the influence of the internal factor at different points in apparent time.Table 6 shows the results.

A number of different lines of evidence can be inferred from the table: statis-tical significance, relative strength of factors, and ranking of factor categories.

TABLE 5. Distribution ofreally as intensifier and asemphasizer by four selected speakers.

Intensifier Modal

Speaker % N % N Total N

91 yr. man 12.5 1 87.5 7 887 yr. woman 0 0 100 4 424 yr. man 51.1 45 48.9 43 8826 yr. woman 54.8 17 45.2 14 31

TABLE 6. Three multivariate analyses of the contribution of factors to the probability ofreally in contemporary British English.

Old.030

Middle.027

Young.124

Input Weight % Ns0Cell Weight % Ns0Cell Weight % Ns0Cell

syntactic functionPredicative [.56] 4 541 [.53] 5 731 .54 15 943Attributive [.45] 2 613 [.47] 3 614 .44 10 577Range 10

educationSecondary & beyond n0a .60 3 429 .55 15 1049Up to secondary .44 3 732 .40 8 471Range 16 15

sexFemale [.51] 3 804 .66 6 732 [.52] 14 880Male [.48] 3 350 .31 2 613 [.48] 11 640Range 35



Higher numbers can be interpreted as favoringreally, whereas lower ones disfa-vor it. The higher the number, the greater the contribution of that factor to the useof really. The factors for which the numbers are enclosed in square brackets wereconsidered in the analysis but were found not to be significant (for further dis-cussion see Tagliamonte 2001).

The internal factor tested in this analysis issyntactic function. Althoughpredicative adjectives consistently favorreally, notice that this factor reachesstatistical significance only in the youngest generation.

The external factors,education andsex, are also involved. Education exertsa consistent statistically significant effect. In both the middle-aged and the youn-gest generation, higher education leads to greater use ofreally.10 The effect of sexis highly contrastive. In the middle generation it is the most significant factorinfluencing the use ofreally, with a range of 35 (which is double that of educa-tion). In the oldest and youngest speakers, there is no effect at all. The factorweights hover near .50.

This leads to a further observation. Note that although education is selectedas statistically significant in the middle-aged speakers, the proportional resultsshow no difference (3% each). In the youngest generation, although there is aslight effect of sex in the percentages (14% for females and 11% for males), itis not selected as statistically significant. Thus, if we had considered only per-centage data, we might think that education is not important in the middle gen-eration, yet the multiple regression confirms that it is. Further, we might thinkthat sex is relevant in the middle and youngest generations; once again, the mul-tiple regression confirms that it is not – it is only significant in the middle gen-eration. This antithesis between the percentages and the factor weights providesan indication that there is interaction between these two external factors. In otherwords, a unilateral treatment of sex and education is not sufficient to explain thevariation.

Let us now examine the interface between education and sex among the middle-aged and the youngest generations in order to see what is underlying these results.Figure 8 shows cross-tabulation of education and sex for middle and the youngestgenerations. The figure plots the frequency ofreally by the combination of edu-cation and sex: the more educated females on the most left to the less educatedmales on the most right. The youngest generation is represented by the solid line;the middle generation by the broken line.

Here we can see clearly that it is not simply the case that the younger, moreeducated, women are usingreally more. In the middle-aged generation, there is aregular effect of sex and education. In the youngest generation, however, thisshifts in direction. One particular cohort, the less educated young men, lags farbehind; they simply do not usereally very much at all (see arrow in Fig. 8).

Now, we can understand better why sex was not selected as significant forreally among the youngest generation in the multivariate analysis in Table 6.Whereas women led the change toreally in the middle-aged generation, the dra-



matic increase in the use ofreally cannot simply be attributed to women continu-ing to lead the change in the youngest generation because the educated males areimplicated equally, if not more so.

D I S C U S S I O N

Our results confirm that use of intensifiers is constantly changing in terms notonly of frequency but also of lexical preference.11 In this community, two inten-sifiers in particular are used the majority of the time –veryandreally. However,this is changing very rapidly among the current population. Not only isreallyrising in frequency in the youngest speakers, the incremental differences in itsdistribution across generations suggest that it first expanded (visible in the com-parison between the oldest and middle-aged speakers), before dramatically in-creasing in frequency among the youngest generation. We have also discoveredan overriding constraint such that intensifiers are preferred with predicative ad-jectives, and this is true regardless of the intensifier. This constraint may be linkedto expansion in function and increased frequency, because it becomes statisticallysignificant for really only among the youngest generation. Interestingly, thirtyyears ago Bolinger (1972:32) listedreally as a “less grammaticized [sic.] inten-sifier.” Put in context with these results, it has grammaticalized considerablysince then.12

figure 8: Distribution of really by age, sex, and education (middle-aged andyounger generations).



We have also provided contemporary evidence to support the belief that womenlead in the change from one intensifier to another. Moreover, we can pinpointexactly where: at the point when the newcomer expands in function. In our data,this is in the middle-aged generation. This is the only cohort where sex is selectedas statistically significant, and the one where we observe the strongest constrainton the use of the intensifier.

The effect of speaker sex, however, is not as simple as has been reportedpreviously for intensifier use. We cannot merely attribute their use to women’spreference for hyperbole, nor can intensifiers be associated entirely with non-standard or vulgar language, since in this study more educated speakers (male orfemale) favor their use. In fact, the younger educated males are just as likely tousereally as the women. We wonder how this cohort compares with the “ladies’men” characterized by Stoffel in 1901, the group he identified as making exten-sive use of intensifers. Were they simply the educated men of that time period?Do our results reflect the more equal roles of men and women in today’s societymore generally? Or do they reflect the varying stylistic choices of men and womenas they construct and reconstruct identities in their respective communities? Al-though the answers to these questions are beyond the scope of this analysis, theypoint to the fact that this linguistic feature could be explored profitably from amore socio-anthropological perspective.

In addition, all the results reported here confirm that intensifiers represent anexcellent site to view grammatical layering in synchronic data. Indeed, intensi-fiers that have been attested from as early as Old English are still part of therepertoire in this variety of modern English.13 Thus, it appears that old intensi-fiers do not fade away; they stick around for a very long time. This extraordinarycontinuity is consistent with extensive research in the grammaticalization litera-ture, where the perpetuity of old forms and meanings has been traced back overa millennium and more (e.g. Traugott & Heine 1991; Bybee et al. 1994). More-over, once a form is delexicalized, it does not appear to be entirely relegated to“islands bound by restrictions” (Bolinger 1972:18), but can be brought out ofexile to be recycled. Thus, while this area of the grammar may well be undergoing“fevered invention” out of speakers’ desires to be original, to demonstrate verbalskills, and to capture attention (e.g. Stoffel 1901, Bolinger 1972, Peters 1994),such developments are clearly notex nihilo.

Finally, and perhaps most provocatively, we have discovered a tremendousgeneration gap in York English: Use of the intensifiervery is a mark of beingover 35, while favoringreally should clearly mark one as much younger. Butare these trends particular to York alone, or to the UK more generally? Dodifferent communities have different “layers” of intensifiers? To what extentdo communities in Britain differ from Anglophone ones in North America andelsewhere? The findings reported here open up the possibility for further in-vestigation. Indeed, we would suggest that systematic comparative studies ofintensifiers in English may be a particularly choice means to track the varying



rates of grammatical change across dialects, as well as to tap into current trendsin contemporary English.

N O T E S

* The second author gratefully acknowledges the generous support of the Economic and SocialResearch Council of the United Kingdom (ESRC) for research grant R00028287. The trajectorywell . right . very. really reflects the actually historical trajectory of intensifier development inEnglish. Although we discuss onlyveryandreally at length, owing to their high frequency all four aremembers of the intensifier cohort in York English.

1 The information in parentheses refers to the community York (YRK) and speaker identification,i.e. speaker code, sex, and age.

2 Bäcklund’s materials comprise several issues of two British newspapers and one American mag-azine, representing “educated English.” In addition, the corpus comprises eight novels and three playswritten by British authors and three novels written by American authors (Bäcklund 1973:10–11).

3 Quitecan be either downtoner or booster, but native speakers of British English tend to use it asdowntoner more frequently. In fact, Quirk et al. (1985:598) listquiteas downtoner.

4 Lexical itemstoo and that are treated as intensifiers by Bolinger 1972 and Bäcklund 1973,although not by others (e.g. Stoffel 1901, Quirk et al. 1985).

5 Stoffel (1901:148) notes thatprettyexpresses “moderate degree” as well as in the sense ofvery.He further notes that “in contemporary usage it would seem that the adverbpretty is especially infavour where, by litotes, a high degree is expressed by an adverb which originally denotes a moderatedegree only” (Stoffel 1901:153). Thus, we decided not to exclude this lexical item.

6 Of course, in other areas of grammaticalization, narrowing of collocation patterns is also possi-ble, particularly in cases where items that are disappearing leave residue, e.g.to in today. We owe thisobservation to one of the reviewers of this manuscript.

7 The category position is not discussed in the main analysis in his article because he states that itis not universal.According to him, this category is most frequently dealt with through adverbs in otherlanguages (Dixon 1977:74).

8 Interestingly, one of the original meanings ofreal/really is “true”, paralleling the case ofvery(OED vol. 8, 201).

9 Really in final position, as in (29c), is said to have a “softening or cajoling effect” (Stenström1987:72, cited in Macaulay 1995:127). In Macaulay’s Scots data, this type ofreally is much morefrequent in the lower-class interviews than in the middle-class interviews. Macaulay interprets suchcorrelations as the projection of middle-class attempts to convey authoritativeness (Macaulay 1995).In the York data, we did not explore such differences with respect to intensifier use; however, in astudy of dual form adverbs, we discuss correlations of-ly and zero adverbs with class and education(see Tagliamonte & Ito 2002).

10 Unfortunately, the effect of education could not be tested among the oldest generation becauseall of the speakers in our sub-sample in this age bracket had been educated only to minimal school-leaving age.

11 Whether this is an indication of increase in intensification in the English language more gen-erally, or simply a reflection of age-grading and0or style difference remains an important question forfurther investigation.

12 Indeed, there are no entries forreally as intensifier in theOED (OED vol. 8, 203–4).13 The long-term layering and recycling found in this analysis is frequently evident from personal

observations from the York community. For example, the second author’s son’s eight-year old friendremarked one night in York in mid-2001 about ice cream:It’s wellgood – yetwellas an intensifier wassupposed to have died out by the mid-14th century. Interestingly, a revival ofwell has recently beenreported for London teenagers (Stenström 2000).

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(Received 11 September 2001; accepted 24 May 2002)



Well weird, right dodgy, very strange, really cool: Layering and recycling in English intensifiers

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