Abstract

While the adverb nemwu, roughly equivalent to the intensifier too in English, has been considered an adverb that intensifies gradable predicates in excess, thereby provoking a negative interpretation, it can also be used to emphasize a positive evaluation in online subjective texts. Moreover, even in the sentences conveying a negative evaluation, only some of the occurrences of nemwu are used as a polarity reversing valence shifter. This paper proposes a novel dichotomy for the usages of nemwu, consisting of ‘Intensifying Adverbs’ (IAs) and ‘Opinion Introducers’ (OIs), and examines the necessary contexts for determining the function of the adverb.

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