Adjectives of purity: a case for distinguishing
contextual from intensifying emphasizers1
Tom Brzyk, Kristin Davidse, Sigi Vandewinkel
K.U.Leuven
1. Introduction
It is generally recognized in grammars of English that prenominal adjectives can be used as
‘emphasizers’ as in sheer delight, pure hard work, mere repetition (R. Quirk et al 1985: 429).
Emphasizers differ syntactically from descriptive modifiers, or epithets (M. Halliday 1994:
191), e.g. pure water, which alternate with predicative position and can typically be graded:
the water is pure, very pure water. By contrast, emphasizers allow neither: *the hard work is
pure, *very pure hard work. Multi-adjectival examples reveal that there is also a scope
difference between epithets and emphasizers. Epithets directly modify the head (R. Dixon
1982: 25), e.g. steep, sheer cliffs, and can, therefore, be syndetically coordinated: sheer and
steep cliffs. Emphasizers, however, have the whole of the NP to their right in their scope: pure
in pure hard work does not apply to work or hard only, but expresses the speaker’s positive
evaluation and heightening of the hard work in question. Emphasizers cannot be syndetically
linked to epithets, e.g. *pure and hard work. Emphasizing uses of adjectives intensify
specific semantic features of the nouns, either in terms of an open scale, e.g. an awful mess, a
terrible bore, or a bounded scale, e.g. total disregard, a complete triumph (C. Paradis (2000:
238), and scaling either up, e.g. sheer exhilaration, or down, e.g. a mere pittance (R. Quirk et
al 1985: 429). This is why intensifying adjectives can only be used with gradable nouns
describing such things as emotions, evaluations or other concepts with quantitative
implications (Bolinger 1972: 58-60). They do not describe distinct properties of entities but
convey speaker stance and attitude towards the referents. In E. Traugott’s (1989) terms, they
do not have a descriptive but a subjective, speaker-related, meaning. Subjective uses of
linguistic elements often develop from their original descriptive uses. Emphasizing uses of
adjectives are generally accepted to have developed from their epithet uses through
delexicalization and grammaticalization (S. Adamson 2000, C. Paradis 2000). If emphasizers
intensify either typically negative or positive semantic features, e.g. raving madman/loon/nut,
versus perfect gentleman/harmony/sense, they are assumed not (yet) to have delexicalized
fully. By contrast, emphasizers that pattern with both positive and negative collocates, e.g.
1
The research reported on in this article was supported by the Interuniversity Attraction Pole (IAP) P6/44 of the
Belgian Science Policy on ‘Grammaticalization and (Inter-)Subjectification’ and grant no. HUM200760706/FILO of the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science and the European Regional Development Fund.
We are very grateful to the two anonymous referees for their incisive and generous comments. Thanks are also
due to Tine Breban, Michele De Gioia, Hendrik De Smet, Éric Laporte, Lieven Vandelanotte and Sarah
Vecchiato for their very helpful comments on this and related work.
pure joy /luck/pleasure versus pure brutality/filth/hogwash are viewed as having progressed
most towards expressing pure degree and speaker stance (cf. G. Lorenz 2002).
In the literature about the emphasizing function of adjectives, a potential descriptive gap
was identified by S. Vandewinkel (2005) and S. Vandewinkel and K. Davidse (2008), who
proposed that, besides the regular intensifying emphasizers, a distinct subtype, viz.
contextual emphasizers, has to be recognized. Adjectives such as pure, mere and very have
uses which semantically are not epithets – and do not manifest the latter’s syntactic behaviour
of predicative alternation and gradability either – but express a type of emphasis. Yet, they do
not intensify the semantic specifications of the nominal description they are used with, but
rather convey a contextual form of emphasis, by including the entity focused on in
heightening, diminishing and contrastive-specificational relations with other elements in the
discourse, as illustrated in (1), (2) and (3) respectively.
(1) Many commentators feel that the deadly cocktail of drugs, guns and Aids currently sweeping
inner city America is threatening the very existence of Afro-Americans. (CB2 – UK
magazines)
(2) When I walk down Nicolson Street, I close my eyes and recall the excitement I would feel at the
mere anticipation of a visit to the old Empire Theatre. (CB – UK ephemera)
(3) She supposed it was just pure good fortune that you ever loved the person who was right for
you. (CB – US books)
Very in (1) does not heighten any semantic features of the noun existence, but it augments the
way in which drugs, guns and AIDS threaten ‘even’ the existence of Afro-Americans in inner
city America. Similarly, mere in (2) does not diminish the anticipation as such, but stresses
that ‘just’ the anticipation of a visit to the theatre sufficed to create excitement. Pure in (3)
means ‘nothing but, just’ and has a specificational function (R. Declerck1988: 8) in that it
singles out good fortune in contrast with other notions to be inferred by the reader. It indicates
that good fortune is the only appropriate or relevant notion from a set of contrasting options.
The semantic distinction between intensifying and contextual emphasizers is reflected
in the different syntactic behaviour of these two uses. Contextual emphasizers systematically
alternate with adverbs placed in front of the NP3, in the sense that the alternate is both
grammatical and has a meaning equivalent to the original, e.g. (1) is threathening even the
existence of Afro-Americans, (2) at just the anticipation of a visit. Indeed, in some examples,
e.g. (3) it was just pure good fortune, such an adverb is present in addition to the contextual
emphasizer, which suggests that the semantic-pragmatic effects of the two converge. This
alternation is not possible with intensifying emphasizers, where it changes the meaning of the
original, as illustrated by (4) and (5). (The symbols :: * stand for semantic non-equivalence.)
(4) I had never been to Cornwall before and it has made me long to know Britain more," she says.
I thought the scenery was a sheer delight." Absolutely fabulous, in fact!. (CB – UK Times):: *
the scenery was only / even a delight. (CB – UK magazines)
(5) In working with the texts of great authors he discovered, first and foremost, the real
happiness, the pure sensual pleasure of words and of all the ideas and feelings they could
convey. (CB – US books) :: * he discovered only / even the sensual pleasure of words
2
All examples marked CB are extracted from the COBUILD corpus Wordbanks online (56,000,000 words) and
are reproduced here with the permission of HarperCollins. The corpus is diversified in terms of geographical
variation (British, American and Australian English) and register (including texts from radio broadcasts, novels,
and ephemera; samples of quality newspapers and spontaneous dialogue are only provided for British English).
3
We thank one of the anonymous referees for pointing this out to us.
This difference in alternation behaviour with regard to pre-NP adverbs points at a scope
difference between contextual and intensifying emphasizers. Whereas the meaning of the
former pertains to the discourse referent designated by the whole NP, that of the latter pertains
only to the semantic features of the head noun and any descriptive modifiers that may be
dependent on it.
S. Vandewinkel and K. Davidse (2008) found that the contextual emphasizing use of pure
was rather uncommon in their predominantly written sample. They noted that, to validate the
necessity of positing this subtype, more detailed data-driven case studies would have to be
carried out. In this article we will therefore widen the scope of study to three adjectives whose
original descriptive meaning was ‘pure, unmixed’ and which developed emphasizing uses:
sheer, mere and pure. As the primary locus of change is assumed to be spoken language (e.g.
Hopper 1987), we will compare spontaneous spoken data with formal written data, viz.
exhaustive extractions on the prenominal uses of the three adjectives from the UK spoken
corpus (9,272,579 words) and the UK Times corpus (5,763,761 words) of COBUILD
Wordbanks. The extractions yielded 106 usable tokens from UK Spoken and 142 from UK
Times for pure, 57 examples from UK Spoken and 162 from UK Times for sheer, and 18
from UK Spoken and 208 from UK Times for mere. These were analysed with regard to
function, i.e. as epithet, intensifying or contextual emphasizer, and in terms of collocational
and constructional patterns associated with these functions. The findings of this analysis will
be discussed in section 2 for pure, section 3 for sheer and section 4 for mere. The focus of the
discussion will be on the descriptive and pragmatic-semantic arguments for distinguishing
intensifying from contextual emphasizing uses.
2. The case of pure
2.1.
Introduction and epithet uses
Of the three adjectives studied, pure displays the widest range of functions and meanings.
Aside from epithet and the two types of emphasizer that we argue need to be distinguished,
pure can also serve the function of classifying adjective (separating pure science from applied
science, for instance), and intensifier (modifying an adjective only, rather than a noun, as in
pure white herons). These latter two uses will not be considered here.
The descriptive epithet function makes up the second largest portion of the data at 31.5%.
In this use pure denotes the general descriptive quality of unmixedness, attributed in the first
place to tangible materials such as substances and classes (water, oil and breeds). ‘Purity’ is
also ascribed to voices, music, etc. and, with the added sense of untaintedness, to abstract
sociocultural concepts in their prototypical form (pure English/socialism) and emotions or
inclinations (pure hate/greed). In other words, the descriptive use of pure is still fully
functional – unlike sheer or mere, whose original lexical senses have almost completely
disappeared (see below).
Table 1 details the spread of the relevant uses of pure across the datasets. The
abbreviations used in this and the following tables are: %: relative share, n: absolute
frequency, N: normalized frequency per 100,000 words.
Epithet
uktimes 100% (142)
Intensifying
Emphasizer
Blended
Reinf.
Emph./Cont. Emph.
Contextual Emphasizer
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
35
49
0.85
47
67
1.16
7
10
0.17
11
16
0.28
ukspoken 100% (106)
34
36
0.39
26.5
28
0.30
5.5
6
0.065
34
36
0.39
Total 100% (270)
31.5
85
0.56
38
102
0.68
9.5
26
0.17
21
57
0.38
Table 1: Relative proportions and frequencies of the different uses of pure in the datasets
2.2.
Intensifying emphasizing uses
The intensifying emphasizers make up the largest portion of the data, viz. 39% in all, or
47.5% of the written data and 28.5% of the spoken data. These uses of pure heighten the
semantic specifications of the head noun and, through this heightening, convey speaker
assessment and attitude. Such uses are found in three collocational environments.
Intensifying pure most commonly combines with notions that can be interpreted as
(stereo)types or traditional roles (as in 6) or sociocultural evaluations (7 and 8). Note that in
each case, the referent of the head noun is not a specific instance, but rather an abstracted
type in terms of which a particular individual or a single activity is classified.
(6) The arrogance and ego of a pure politician bulldozes the need for skills, expertise and nous.
(UK Times)
(7) A lot of crime erm is just pure vandalism which i arises out of boredom. (UK spoken)
(8) It was an act of pure theatre on Fitzgerald's part, although the jockey could so easily have
listened to the closing stages from the inside of an ambulance. (UK Times)
In these combinations, pure expresses speaker assessment, achieved through a semantic
shift away from the quality of unmixedness, towards general scalarity. Pure no longer has any
descriptive sense; rather it realizes speaker emphasis on the full extent to which someone or
something can be called an archetypical politician, or what is commonly understood to be
vandalism or theatre. The systematic collocation with abstract stereotypes such as in (6)-(8)
only enhances that aspect of pure. In each of the above examples, the arrogance supposedly
typical of politicians, and the extent to which particular behaviour can be labelled vandalism
or theatre are invoked as prototypes that serve as convenient reference points to evaluate
particular instances.
A second important set of collocates is made up of emotions, inclinations and states of
mind. Examples include negative items such as pure contempt / insanity / foolhardiness /
hatred as well as positive ones such as pure fun / pleasure / jouissance. It can be noted that
these two collocational groupings form a continuation of the two abstract sets of collocates
found with descriptive uses of pure, viz. abstract sociocultural stereotypes and emotions or
inclinations.
A final set of collocates related to abstract evaluations but standing out as a distinct subset
of fixed combinations with intensifying pure are formed by a series of synonyms for
‘nonsense’, such as pure fantasy / conjecture / speculation / science fiction. Taken together,
these three sets of collocates illustrate the applicability of intensifying pure to positive and
negative notions – an indication that the largely positive lexical sense of unmixedness has
retreated to the background in favour of pure scalarity and speaker attitude.
2.3.
Contextual emphasizing uses
Contextual emphasizing uses are less frequent than intensifying ones, but in the spoken data
they do account for 34% as opposed to only 11% of the written data. In the spoken data, pure
is hence more often used as contextual emphasizer than as intensifying emphasizer (26.5%).
Contextual emphasizers are defined by S. Vandewinkel and K. Davidse (2008: 264) as not
heightening the semantic specifications of the head noun but conveying a contextual form of
emphasis. That we are dealing with a different meaning than that of intensifying emphasizers
can be illustrated particularly clearly, if contextual emphasizers are used with a noun that is in
principle gradable, such as numbers in (9).
(9) A: erm and we ... hadn't ... come up with the idea of ... er er you know discounting that
against the fact they they're high frequency in the corpus as a whole.
B: Yes.
A: Erm it's just ... pure ... pure numbers.
B: Numbers. Yeah yeah yeah. (UK spoken)
In (9) pure does not make the numbers any bigger, but focuses on the idea of absolute
frequency (‘pure numbers’) in contrast with frequency related to a standard of comparison
such as the corpus as a whole. Pure is paraphrasable here as ‘just’ or ‘nothing but’.
Collocationally, the contextual emphasizer uses of pure can be seen to break free from the
typical collocational sets of descriptive and intensifying pure, viz. stereotypes and emotions.
Contextually emphasizing pure is mainly used with expressions that do not belong to these
sets, such as data, technique, scientific-interest point of view, speech and the items in (10)(12).
(10) So that's the substitution effect alone okay ... that's ... that's an illustration of the pure
substitution effect it doesn't have any effect on our income. (UK spoken)
(11) Well it's pure luck that someone lands on the electric company or water works and it gives
that player quite a big advantage. (UK spoken)
(12) Note that even today you see Latin has roles in many countries for pure reasons of its old
momentum. (UK spoken)
The above examples feature pure in contexts distinctively lacking any quantifiable
heightening effect. Instead, the items focused on by pure – the substitution effect, luck and
reasons – are explicitly presented to be considered on their own terms. The contextual
emphasizing function marks an item as being the only currently relevant one, selecting it
among contrasting items, which may be overtly expressed in the context, such as by the
underlined words in (9) and (10). The contrasting options may also be left to be inferred by
the reader as in (11) and (12), where constructional environments such as copular clause with
extraposed subject (11) and appositive NP (12) have a meaning which excludes other options:
it’s X that ... , the pure reason of X (G. Francis 1993: 152). Note that constructions such as
copular clauses may support the specificational effect, even if the contrast is specified
lexically, as in (11).
The data also contain examples in which pure can be interpreted equally plausibly as an
intensifying and a contextual emphasizer, e.g.
(13) The fact is that both views are right. Sport is not pure fun, nor is it pure ghastliness. Sport is
a strange and terrible drama, that is all and often, farce and despair walk hand in hand. (UK
Times)
Example (13) proposes a dialectic position about sport (‘it is both fun and ghastliness’). In
denying that sport is either ‘just’ (pure) fun or ‘just’ (pure) ghastliness, it foregrounds a
contextual emphasizer reading of these two NPs. However, as one reads on, both the notions
of ‘fun’ and ‘ghastliness’ are repeated in the form of heightened descriptions, viz. farce and
terrible drama, despair, which offers contextual support for intensifying readings of pure fun
and pure ghastliness as well: in this context, heightened notions of ‘fun’ and ghastliness’ are
being considered. As the two emphasizing readings are semantically close, such examples are
probably best viewed best as ‘blended’. The phenomenon of blending refers to the presence of
properties from two constructions in one utterance, which allows the speaker to imply their
meanings at the same time (D. Bolinger 1961, B. Aarts 2007: 198-283). According to B.
Aarts (2007: 188), blending probably plays “an extremely important role in language change”.
If blended examples are relatively frequent, as they are in the pure-data, in which they
account for 9.5% of the total, they mostly indicate ongoing pragmatic-semantic change, but
without revealing the historical directionality of the change.
3. The case of sheer
3.1.
Introduction and epithet uses
The synchronic data of sheer contain four different senses. Sheer still has two specialized
epithet senses which derive from its original basic sense ‘clear’, viz. ‘steep’, as in sheer cliffs,
and ‘thin, diaphonous’, as in sheer black tights. As shown in Table 2, these are rather
marginal in terms of frequency, covering only 7% of all tokens. All the other instances of
sheer are emphasizing ones, which, again, have to be split up into intensifying and contextual
emphasizers.
Epithet
(‘steep’/’thin’)
Intensifying
Emphasizer
Blended
Reinf.
Emph./Cont. Emph.
Contextual
Emphasizer
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
uktimes 100% (162)
8
13
0.22
77.5
126
2.18
7
11
0.19
7.5
12
0.21
ukspoken 100% (57)
Total
100% (219)
2
7
1
14
0.01
0.09
56
72
32
158
0.34
1.05
12
8
7
18
0.07
0.12
30
13
17
29
0.18
0.19
Table 2. Relative proportions and frequencies of the different uses of sheer in the datasets
3.2.
Intensifying emphasizing uses
The majority of uses, viz. 72%, are intensifying uses of sheer, heightening the semantic
specifications of the head noun. They are found in four collocational environments, which
partly coincide with those of intensifying pure. Firstly, sheer may emphasize emotions, such
as positive joy, bliss, delight, but also negative apathy or frustration. In these contexts, e.g.
(14), sheer intensifies the speaker’s emotions or the speaker’s interpretation of another
person’s emotions.
(14) I will dance until I drop. This will be the biggest moment for me, it will be a feeling of sheer
exhilaration. (UK Times)
A second related set of collocates describes human behaviour, inclinations and attitudes.
These are predominantly negative, e.g. sheer stubbornness / snobbery / egotism, though a few
are positive, like sheer hard work / persistence. Thirdly, sheer intensifies abstract qualities
and evaluations in order to characterize entities and states of affairs from the point of view of
the speaker, e.g. (15), in which sheer heightens the barbarity to a very high degree.
(15) The Home Secretary was right to impose a 15-year minimum sentence on the two schoolboys
who killed James Bulger because of the sheer barbarity of the crime, the High Court was told
yesterday. (UK Times)
This is by far the largest set of collocates, which can be either negative, as in (15) and sheer
madness/stupidity/staginess, or positive, as in sheer magic / clarity / beauty. Finally, sheer
also intensifies inherently quantitative nouns, such as physical variables or numbers, as in
sheer volume / velocity / number / force and weight in (16).
(16) ... the tedium before the interval was seldom broken. Fortunately, it buckled under the sheer
weight of McCoist's character. (UK Times).
At first sight, these index the speaker’s positive or negative attitude less clearly, but they are
often part of a positive or negative semantic prosody (J. Sinclair 1991) imposed on the
proposition and expressed by additional contextual cues such as fortunately in (16).
3.3.
Contextual emphasizing uses
The sheer-data also contain clear examples of contextual emphasizers such as (17).
(17) When compared to the megabucks made by a film such as Die Hard with a Vengeance (budget
$83m; gross $350m), the takings of most of these smaller films appear inconsequential. But in
sheer profitability the ratio of production cost to takings the successful independent film wins
hands down. (UK Times)
(18) He took optional erm signalling classes. Entirely optional and erm th they were of no
advantage at all but just for the sheer interest [...] (UK spoken)
In (17) sheer does not augment the quantitative scale implied by profitability, in contrast with
sheer weight in (16) above, in which the ‘weight’ is heightened. On the contrary, sheer
indicates that the speaker is dealing with the referent of the head noun as it is. It signals to the
hearer that, in contrast to the speaker’s previous statement, in which he discussed films in the
light of their absolute takings, he is now considering their profitability only, i.e. the ratio of
production cost to takings. Thus, sheer serves a specificational function: it singles out the
referent of the head noun from a set of other options. This meaning can, following the Oxford
English Dictionary (OED), be paraphrased as ‘that and nothing else’ or ‘neither more nor less
than’4. Specificational-contrastive sheer is often supported by other contextual elements such
as copular clauses or adverbs such as just, as in (18), in which interest is focused on as ‘that
and nothing else’, i.e. without any advantages. Presumably, contextual emphasizing sheer
emerged in contexts with contrastive options, in which the lexical notion of ‘unmixedness’
shifted to emphasis on ‘this one and not the other options’.
As shown in Table 2, the contextual emphasizer use of sheer is restricted to 13% of the
whole dataset, but as with pure, this use is relatively more common in the spoken data, of
which it constitutes 30%. However, sheer is overall more than three times more common in
the written data and clearly has a more formal ring to it than emphasizing pure.
Emphasizing sheer is also found in blended contexts, in which contextual features support
both a contextual and an intensifying reading, as in (19).
(19) There would seem to be no reason, other than sheer perversity, why the last base rate cut on
January 18 should not be followed by another the next time the Chancellor and Governor of
the Bank of England meet on March 7. (UK Times)
4
The entry from which these glosses are taken runs: With a descriptive sb., or one denoting a quality, condition,
circumstance, etc.: Neither more nor less than (what is expressed by the sb.) that and nothing else; unmitigated,
unqualified; downright, absolute, pure (OED IX: 666). Interestingly, the first four glosses paraphrase what we
have just identified as the contextual emphasizer use of sheer, while the last three paraphrase its intensifying use.
In this way, the OED supports the idea that all these senses are of the same general nature: they are not
themselves descriptive, but modify, viz. emphasize, the descriptive substantive. However, like the literature on
emphasizers, the OED does not distinguish contextual from intensifying emphasizers.
No reason, other than invites a contextual emphasizer reading, but perversity can also be read
as heightened, i.e. as an intensifying emphasizer. Blended contexts typically illustrate the
semantic link between intensifying and contextual emphasizer reading, as in (13): a strong
factor (heightened perversity) can easily be the only reason (‘just’ perversity) 5. Blended
examples with sheer constitute 8% of the total, indicating, as with pure, ongoing pragmaticsemantic change in the area of emphasizing uses.
4. The case of mere
4.1.
Introduction and epithet uses
Mere, like sheer, once had the general descriptive sense ‘pure, unmixed’, which was ascribed
to entities such as wine not mixed with water in the 16th-17th century (OED VI: 56). In
Present-day English, mere is no longer used as epithet. Its current meanings are all
emphasizing and, in contrast with pure and sheer, contextual emphasizers outnumber
intensifying emphasizers by far. Their relative frequencies in the data are given in Table 3.
Epithet
Intensifying
Emphasizer
Blend Reinf. Emph.
/ Cont. Emph..
Contextual
Emphasizer
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
%
n
N
uktimes 100% (208)
0
0
0
5
10
0.17
2
5
0.086
93
193
3.35
ukspoken 100% (18)
0
0
0
22
4
0.04
5.5
1
0.01
72.5
13
0.14
Total 100% (226)
0
0
0
6
14
0.09
3
6
0.04
91
206
1.37
Table 3. Relative proportions and frequencies of the different uses of mere in the datasets
4.2.
Intensifying emphasizing uses
The intensifying uses of mere form 5% of the written data and 22% of the spoken ones. The
sets of collocates that are intensifid by mere are nouns denoting small quantities, which mere
makes even smaller (20), and negative emotions and evaluations, which mere makes more
negative, as in (21). The intensifying uses of mere in Present-day English all have what R.
Quirk et al (1985: 429) characterize as a downscaling effect.
(20) … her nipples were hidden by a mere whisper of cloth; ... (UK Times)
(21) Shelley himself appears to have been rather er ambivalent about his poem Queen Mab er later
on in his career and saw it himself as being mere juvenilia. (UK spoken)
4.3. Contextual emphasizing uses
The overwhelming majority of emphasizing uses of mere are contextual emphasizers, which
in accordance with the definition of that function, convey emphasis by dint of various
contextual relations set up with other elements. As with pure and sheer, these relations are
specificational-contrastive, but mere adds a diminishing component to the contrast, as
illustrated by (22).
5
We thank one of the anonymous referees for this observation.
(22) Neither is in the Test team but, as good sportsmen must, both feel they ought to be, so the
three-day game that begins … today is, for them at least, more than mere practice. (UK Times)
In (22) the contrast is between mere practice and the sportsmen’s view of the three-day game,
i.e. between something that is put lower in the comparison and something that is judged to be
more important. This diminishing comparison may be made explicit by other markers besides
mere, e.g. more than in (22). A possible paraphrase is ‘only that in contrast with something
more important or more useful’. It is a contextual type of emphasis, because it is not the
meaning of the head noun that is diminished in itself, but the position of its referent vis-à-vis
other elements present in the context. This is very obvious when mere is used with a nominal
description that cannot be scaled down in any literal sense, e.g. four hours in (23).
(23) We had, of course, been hoping for it to coincide with Keats’s birthday, but you can imagine
how hard it proved to cram 12 whole quatrains into a mere four hours. (UK Times)
In our data, contextual emphasizer mere is associated with three general discourse
functions: (i) the diminishing of classifications, as in (22) above, (ii) the diminishing of
cardinal quantities, as in (23), and (iii) the identification of an element in the context whose
apparent insignificance is turned around into unexpected significance, as in (24).
(24) Anyone who freezes with fright at the mere sight of the dentist’s chair will be pleased to know
that you can now tune into something … more relaxing than a screeching drill. (UK Times)
The sight of a dentist’s chair is not as such something to be afraid of, except if you are very
anxious about the treatment you are subjected to in it so that the mere sight of it becomes very
significant in that context. These three discourse functions are neatly associated with specific
constructional environments and determiner types, which we will briefly discuss.
The first discourse function, classification, is associated with predicative complements in a
broad sense and with the introduction of discourse-new concepts, both of which are coded by
indefinite NPs. Predicative constructions classify the entity focused on as ‘an’ instance of the
type described by the head noun of the predicative complement (R. Langacker 1991: 67).
Adding mere to it gives a diminishing slant to this classification, as in (24). The second set of
constructions that always have indefinite determination is formed by NPs with mere that
introduce a referent that is considered insignificant in the context, e.g. (22).
(25) In the late 1980s Japan was drinking about three million bottles a year at a staggering £70
each. In France, not a country to let a good wine go to waste over mere political disputes,
demand for beaujolais is steadily growing. (UK Times)
These NPs serve a rhetorical classification function, introducing and at the same time
dismissing potentially problematic elements. The association of classification with
indefiniteness stems from the fact that indefinite NPs foreground the categorizing function of
the head noun (K. Davidse 2004: 522), which gives new and salient information, whereas the
head noun in definite NPs is informationally presupposed .
The second general discourse function of mere is the contextual diminishing of cardinal
quantities, as in a mere four hours (example 23 above). It is structurally realized by the
pattern a + mere + cardinal numerative + head noun, in which the pre-numerative position of
mere reflects its restricted scope: it indicates that the speaker considers the quantity small in
the given context.
In its third discourse function, illustrated by the mere sight of a dentist’s chair in (24),
mere gives an ironic or paradoxical twist to the apparent insignificance of the contextual
element focused on. As this requires the pointing out of that element, it is always realized by
definite NPs. Appositive NPs such as the mere fact of can also be subsumed under this
function, e.g.
(26) The mere prospect of Diana fronting for Britain in Washington, Paris or Moscow would send
Her Majesty’s diplomatic service into a spin. (UK Times)
Mere occurs in some examples that blend intensifying and contextual emphasizing
meaning, but these form smaller fractions of the data than was the case with pure and sheer,
suggesting that its contextual emphasizing use has established itself more, and this
particularly in the written data, of which 93% features this use. Apparently, constructionaldiscoursal environments promoting the delexicalized and grammaticalized contextual
emphasizer use may also be typical of the written language.
5. Conclusion
In this article we have argued that the distinction between intensifying and contextual
emphasizers first proposed for pure by S. Vandewinkel (2005) also applies to sheer and mere.
On the basis of analysis of spoken and written data of these three adjectives, we have
characterized their intensifying and contextual emphasizing uses. When used as intensifying
adjectives, they intensify particular semantic specifications of the gradable nouns they
modify, by scaling them up – or down as in the case of mere. These gradable nouns can be
ranged into partially overlapping collocational sets for the three adjectives, mainly emotions
and inclinations, sociocultural stereotypes and evaluations, and quantitative notions. The
contextual emphasizing uses, by contrast, do not modify the semantic specifications of the
nominal description. For instance, contextual emphasizer mere does not make the actual
entities referred to smaller. Rather, contextual emphasizers modify the discourse relations
which the nominal referents entertain with other elements in the context. All three adjectives
of purity construe contrastive-specificational relations. The semantic-pragmatic value of
contextual emphasizers pure and sheer is ‘only that’, excluding possible alternatives. To this
specificational value mere adds a contextual evaluation of ‘insignificance’, which may be
turned around into unexpected significance. In their contextual emphasizing uses the three
adjectives break free from the collocational restrictions of their intensifying uses, as all sorts
of notions, not just gradable ones, may be focused on. On the other hand, contextual
emphasizing uses are often associated with specificational contructions such as cleft and
copular constructions and appositive NPs. As for the distribution of intensifying and
contextual emphasizers over the three adjectives, they manifest specialization patterns
associated with the written versus the spoken mode. In the Times data pure is used
predominantly in an intensifying way (normalized frequency (N): 1.16), but in the UK spoken
data its contextual emphasizer use (N: 0.39) slightly predominates over its intensifying use
(N: 0.30). Sheer is typically an intensifying emphasizer of the written register (N: 2.18),
while mere is predominantly a contextual emphasizer of the written mode (N: 3.35). Together,
the three adjectives of purity make a convincing case that the distinction between intensifying
and contextual emphasizers is a valid one. Further study of this distinction will have to be
pursued for emphasizing adjectives from other semantic fields such as truth (e.g. very, true)
and reality (e.g. real, actual).
References
Aarts, Bas. 2007. Syntactic gradience: the nature of grammatical indeterminacy. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Adamson, Sylvia. 2000. A lovely little example. Word order options and category shift in the
premodifying string. In Pathways of change. Grammaticalisation in English, O. Fischer, A.
Rosenbach and D. Stein (eds.), 39-66, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1961. Syntactic blends and other matters. Language 37.366-381, Washington:
Linguistics Society of America.
Bolinger, Dwight. 1972. Degree words. The Hague: Mouton.
Brzyk, Tom. 2007. The development of emphasiser uses in the noun phrase: A diachronic study of
mere and sheer. MA Thesis. Linguistics Department. K.U.Leuven.
Davidse, Kristin. 2004. The interaction of identification and quantification in English determiners. In
Language, culture and mind, M. Achard & S. Kemmer (eds.), 507–533, Stanford: CSLI.
Declerck, Renaat. 1988. Studies on copular sentences, clefts and pseudo-clefts. Leuven: Leuven
University Press.
Dixon, Robert. 1982. Where have all the adjectives gone? And other essays in semantics and syntax.
Berlin: Mouton.
Francis, Gill. 1993. A corpus-driven approach to grammar. In Text and technology: In honour of John
Sinclair, M. Baker, G. Francis & E. Tognini-Bonelli (eds.), 138-156, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Halliday, Michael. 1994. An introduction to functional grammar. 2nd Ed. London: Arnold.
Hopper, Paul. 1987. Emergent grammar. BLS: General Session and Parasession on Grammar and
Cognition, 13.139-157, Berkeley: Berkeley Linguistics Society.
Langacker, Ronald. 1991. Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 2. Descriptive application,
Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Lorenz, Gunter. 2002. Really worthwhile or not really significant?: a corpus-based approach to
delexicalization and grammaticalization of intensifiers in Modern English. In New reflections on
grammaticalization, I. Wisher , G. Diewald (eds.), 143-161, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Murray James; Henry Bradly; William Craigie; C.T. Onions. 1933. The Oxford English Dictionary,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Paradis, Carita. 2000. Reinforcing adjectives: a cognitive semantic perspective on grammaticalization,
In Generative theory and corpus studies, R. Bermúdez-Otero, D. Denison, R. Hogg, C. McCully
(eds.), 233-258, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Quirk, Randolph; Sidney Greenbaum; Geoffrey Leech; Jan Svartvik. 1985. A comprehensive grammar
of the English language, London: Longman.
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, concordance, collocation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Traugott, Elizabeth Closs. 1989. On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of
subjectification in semantic change. Language 65.31-55, Washington: Linguistics Society of
America.
Vandewinkel, Sigi. 2005. Attitudinal Adjectives and Category Shift in the Nominal Group. MA Thesis.
Linguistics Department. K.U.Leuven.
Vandewinkel, Sigi. Forthcoming. Strengthening uses of pure/puur in English and Dutch. English Text
Construction 3.1, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Vandewinkel, Sigi; Kristin Davidse, 2008. The interlocking paths of development towards emphasizer
adjective pure. Journal of historical pragmatics 9.255-287, Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Summary
This article is concerned with the ‘emphasizing’ uses of the adjectives of purity pure, sheer
and mere. On the basis of qualitative and quantitative corpus study, it is argued that within
these emphasizing uses a distinction has to be made between intensifying and contextual
emphasizers. The generally recognized intensifying emphasizers heighten or lower the
semantic specifications of the nominal descriptions they are used with. The neglected subtype
of contextual emphasizers, by contrast, does not make the notions referred to any bigger or
smaller, but conveys a contextual form of emphasis by including these notions into
contrastive-specificational, heightening or diminishing relations with other elements in the
context.
Authors’ addresses
Tom Brzyk
tom.brzyk@student.kuleuven.be
Kristin Davidse
kristin.davidse@arts.kuleuven.be
Sigi Vandewinkel
sigi.vandewinkel@arts.kuleuven.be
Linguistics Department
Blijde-Inkomststraat 21
B-3000 Leuven
Belgium