[Lingtyp] Intensification and causation
David Gil
gil at shh.mpg.de
Sat Oct 16 13:00:34 UTC 2021
Dear all,
I have heard English /too/ being used instead of /very/ in numerous
places around the world in the kind of English jargon that local tourist
touts use when addressing foreigners.
A similar development occurs also in Indonesian with the form /terlalu/
(INVOL:pass). While in Standard Indonesian this means 'too'
('excessively'), in the colloquial varieties of Indonesian that I am
familiar with, there is no counterpart to /too /('excessively').
However, in some eastern dialects of Malay/Indonesian (I have heard this
in Timor, Sumba and central Sulawesi), /terlalu/ (or a cognate thereof,
usually /talalu/) is used to mean 'very'.
David
On 16/10/2021 13:11, Pier Marco Bertinetto wrote:
> The same change is occurring in Italian.
> 'Troppo' has the same negative overtone as Fr. 'trop', but for young
> people it is also a frequently used intensifiers.
> The transition is easy to analyze: 'troppo bello' =
> 'exceedingly/overwhelmingly beautiful' --> 'very beautiful'.
> Best
> Pier Marco
>
>
>
> Il giorno sab 16 ott 2021 alle ore 11:56 Jesse P. Gates
> <stauskad at gmail.com <mailto:stauskad at gmail.com>> ha scritto:
>
> Dear Jeremy,
>
> Could you tell us the precise Chinese dialect that this
> construction occurs in? In many other Chinese dialects
> 'Adj.-de-hen' is simply an intensification construction, so it is
> interesting how this dialect that you speak of has constrained the
> meaning so specifically to a cause to negative effect meaning.
>
> Languages often have a choice between a negative intensifier and a
> positive one.
>
> I think in English 'too' often has negative overtones to it, but
> not always.
>
> In French, 'trop' is a negative intensifier and 'tres' is a
> positive one. But I have heard that this is changing a bit and
> young people on the streets use trop for some positive senses.
>
> When I first started studying Chinese it took me a while to
> understand that 太 did not intensify in a negative way,
> necessarily. For example, if I say in English, 'he's too fast',
> that usually means something negative (like I can't catch him or
> beat him in a race), it usually doesn't mean 'he is very fast' in
> a neutral way or 'he's so fast' in a positive way. But in Mandarin
> 他太快了 can be used for the meaning 'he is very fast', it can be used
> to get a neutral, or negative, or positive meaning.
>
> --
> Best regards,
>
> *Jesse P. Gates, PhD
> *Nankai University, School of Literature 南开大学文学院
> https://nankai.academia.edu/JesseGates
> <https://nankai.academia.edu/JesseGates>
>
>
> On Sat, Oct 16, 2021 at 2:55 PM tangzhengda <tangzhengda at 126.com
> <mailto:tangzhengda at 126.com>> wrote:
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> In a certain NW Chinese dialect the adjective phrase of
> '*Adj.-/de/-hen*' (roughly taken to mean '*very Adj*.') can
> only be used /on condition that/ it take the role of a CAUSE,
> or a 'causing state', by which a NEGATIVE EFFECT is resulted.
> The Negative effect, as an 'event' that has never factually
> happen, can be encoded as another clause, an element of the
> same clause, or totally covertly implied. For example,
>
> INTS as CAUSE NEG EFFECT
> 这 鸡 瘦-得-很， 他 不 买
> this chicken thin-de-very, he NEG. buy.
>
> (When buying chickens) 这 鸡
> 瘦-得-很。
> this chicken thin-de-very
> 'The chicken is thin (therefore he
> cannot buy it/it fails to be worth...)'
>
> （See a chicken roaming by, no intent to buy） ** *这 鸡
> 瘦-得-很
> this chicken thin-de-very
>
>
>
> My wonder is whether some correlation exists between the
> intensification of a property (like an AP magnified by the
> degree words) and the CAUSTION, esp. negative ones (in Barros
> 2003, positive cause plus a negative effect is one type of the
> negative caustion where the relata is termed as
> 'prevention/interference'). Perhaps English 'too...to...'
> could be such a construction to connect the state/property and
> an EVENT. If yes, how is the correlation motivated and
> typologically attested?
>
> With best wishes,
> Jeremy
>
>
> --
>
> 唐正大
> 中国社会科学院语言研究所《中国语文》编辑部
> 北京市建国门内大街5号，100732
>
> Institute of Linguistics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
> No.5 Jianguomennei Dajie, Beijing, China; 100732
>
>
>
>
>
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> --
> =========================================================
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--
David Gil
Senior Scientist (Associate)
Department of Linguistic and Cultural Evolution
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Deutscher Platz 6, Leipzig, 04103, Germany
Email: gil at shh.mpg.de
Mobile Phone (Israel): +972-526117713
Mobile Phone (Indonesia): +62-81344082091
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