intensifiers: which is more powerful

[Joel S. Berson]

At 9/20/2011 12:51 PM, Michael Newman wrote:
>Krugman (my hero) has an interesting use of intensifiers in his blog
>today.: (http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/20/taxes-and-the-wealthy/)
>
>
>the CBO estimates that separate the really rich from the only very
>rich only go up to 2005:



>He then goes on to say: "Changes in tax rates have strongly favored
>the very, very rich."



>We usually think of intensifiers as roughly equivalent, but here
>there's a ranking although I'm not sure which is supposed to be more
>powerful, "really" or "very." I think it's "very," but I'm not
>confident about that.

It seems clear that the "really rich" are richer than the "only very rich".

The "very, very rich" are surely richer than the (only) "very
rich".  But then, I think, the "really rich" should probably be
compared to the "very, very rich", not the merely "only very
rich".  Which is richer than the other is not clear to me.

But Richie Rich is richer than them all.

Joel






>Michael Newman
>Associate Professor of Linguistics
>Queens College/CUNY
>michael.newman at qc.cuny.edu
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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