Death-related intensifiers in the history of the English language: grammaticalisation and other proccesses of language change

Abstract

The experience of death is, anthropologically, of the most genuine concern for all cultures and societies worldwide, since it marks the most extreme limits of human existence. With such an impact on our routines, it should come as no surprise that it can be effectively exploited as a source of intensification in language, perhaps even cross-linguistically. Although some studies have addressed the uses of specific intensifiers from the semantic field of death (cf. Claridge 2011 on dead and Margerie 2011 on to death), a comprehensive diachronic corpus-based study of death-related intensifiers is still missing. This dissertation, therefore, sets out to fill this gap by accounting for the semantic evolution of the intensifiers dead(ly), mortal(ly), and to death, covering from the Middle English period (1100-1500) to Present-day English.