Abstract
This paper investigates three main strategies used by Spanish teenagers to intensify their language, namely by suffixation and affixation of the base, and by recurring to the lexical intensifier mazo. For this purpose, all occurrences of these intensifiers in the Corpus Oral de Lenguaje Adolescente de Madrid (COLAm) are analyzed. Rather than describing the behavior of each individual category, this article aims at providing a better understanding of both the internal (morphosyntactic and semantic-pragmatic) and external (sociolinguistic) factors that determine the alternating use of the three strategies within the paradigm of intensifiers. The analysis also looks into the grammaticalization process that has given rise to the use of mazo as a highly frequent and versatile intensifier in teenage talk.
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