Chapter 9 - Intensifiers across Time

Summary

Probing further into the diachronic development of the intensifiers and their usage across the intensifier categories, time and the speaker groups, this chapter discusses possible factors that might account for the trends of development attested, among them various collocational features, the possible role played by the foreign origin of the terms, the potential interference on the part of the scribes taking down the notes, and stylistic shifts shaping the records for publication. The chapter also presents and explains a few interaction effects of time on the sociopragmatic variables (role, gender, and class) detected with the help of a supplementary regression model.