The paper looks into the expression of intensification with parametric nouns such as PRICE, COST, FEE, RATE, etc., focusing on collocations these nouns form with intensifying adjectives, inchoative and causative intensifying verbs and corresponding de-verbal nouns. Degrees of intensification possible with these nouns are discussed, as well as analytical vs. synthetic expression of intensification (a steep increase in prices ~ a spike in prices). Sample lexicalization rules are proposed—namely, rules that map semantic representations of intensifier collocations headed by nouns of this type to their deepsyntactic representations. The theoretical framework of the paper is Meaning-Text linguistic theory.
Altemberg, Bengt. 1991. Amplifier Collocations in Spoken English. In Johanson, S. & Stenström, A.- B., eds, English Computer Corpora. Selected Papers and Research Guide, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin/New York, p. 127-149.
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Civardi, Eugenio. 2015. The Semantics of Degree Verbs and the Telicity Issue. Borealis: An International Journal of Hispanic Linguistics, 4(1): 57-77.
Boguslavskij, Igor & Iomdin, Leonid. 2000. Semantika medlennosti [The Semantics of Slowness]. Slovo v tekste i v slovare. Sbornik stat’ej k 70-letiju akademika Ju. D. Apresjana. Jazyki russkoj kul’tury, Moskva, p. 52-60.
Cacchiani, Silvia, 2004. Towards a Model for Investigating Predicate-Intensifier Collocations. Proceedings of EURALEX 2004, p. 943-947.
Fleischhauer, Jens. 2013. Interaction of Telicity and Degree Gradation in Change of State Verbs. In Arsenijevic, B., Gehrke, B. & Marín, R., eds, Studies in the Composition and Decomposition of Event Predicates. Springer, Dordrecht, p. 125-152.
Gallardo, Catherine. 2009. L’intensification dans les expressions figées françaises à coordination interne. Lingvisticæ Investigationes, 32(2): 238-252.
Greenbaum, Sidney. 1970. Verb-Intensifier Collocations in English: An Experimental Approach. Mouton, The Hague/Paris.
Grossmann, Francis & Tutin, Agnès. 2007. Motivation of Lexical Functions in Collocations: The Case of Intensifiers Denoting ‘Joy’. In Wanner, Leo, ed., Selected Lexical and Grammatical Issues in the Meaning-Text Theory. In Honour of Igor Mel’cuk. Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia, p. 140-165.
Iordanskaja, Lidija & Polguère, Alain. 2005. Hooking up Syntagmatic Lexical Functions to Lexicographic Definitions. In Apresjan, Ju. & Iomdin, L., eds, East-West Encounter: Second International Conference on Meaning-Text Theory. Slavic Culture Languages Publishing House, Moscow, p. 176-186.
Kennedy, Christopher & McNally, Louise. 2005. Scale Structure, Degree Modification, and the Semantics of Gradable Predicates. Language, 81, p. 345–381.
Mel’cuk, Igor. 2012, 2013, 2015. Semantics. From eaning to Text, vols 1-3. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia.
Mel’cuk, Igor. 2006. Explanatory Combinatorial Dictionary. In Sica, G., ed., Open Problems in Linguistics and Lexicography. Polimetrica, Monza, p. 225–355.
Méndez-Naya, Bélen, ed. 2008. Intensifiers, Special Issue of English Language and Linguistics, 12(2).
Milicevic, Jasmina & Timošenko, Svetlana. 2014. Towards a Fine-grained Description of Intensifying Adjectives for Text Processing. Computational Linguistics and Intellectual Technologies. Proceedings of the Annual International Conference on Computational Linguistics, DIALOG 2014, p. 427-440.
Quirk, Randolph, Greenbaum, Sidney, Leech, Geoffrey & Svartvik, Jan. 1985. A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. Longman, London.
Van Der Wouden, Ton & Foolen, Ad. 2017. A Most Serious and Extraordinary Problem. Intensification of Adjectives in Dutch, German, and English. Leuvense Bijdragen, 101: 82-100.
Wanner, Leo, ed. 1996. Lexical Functions in Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia.
