Intensifiers in the Language of the 21st Century: Word-Building, Semantics, Syntagmatics and Dynamics of Evalution

Abstract

The article considers the categories of evaluation and intensity in cognitive and pragmatic aspects. The purpose of the research is to establish the relationship between the categories of evaluation and intensity based on the material of word-building and lexical-semantic units from lexicographic sources and media and fiction texts. As a result of the research, word-building and lexical-semantic intensifiers are characterized by the use of word-building, semantic and contextual methods. The article shows such kinds of intensifiers as affixes and affixoides in neoderivatives, neoderivatives created on the base of reduplication. The article shows the estimated ambivalence of dimensional-evaluative affixes, in connection with pragmatic conditions, context and semantics of productive base. The article describes such an extension of the functional range of intensifiers as oxymoron quality and ambivalence of lexical intensifiers. The functions of the intensifiers (pragmatic and stylistic) are defined. The repeatability of syntagmatic bias models indicates the dynamics of evaluation in the class of lexical intensifiers in the Russian language of the modern period. The phenomena described in the article generally show the development of the semantic category of intensity in the Russian language of the 21 st century, which is expressed in the dynamics of its components, such as word-building means, word-building units, lexical units.