Towards a model for investigating predicate-intensifier collocations

This paper concentrates on very, absolutely, extremely, impossibly. It provides an elegant model for investigating the whys and wherefores of adverbial intensifiers. Specifically, the main emphasis lies on the motivations behind choosing from among competing intensifiers in a non-haphazard way. The model is meant as a ‘combinatory chart’ that allows for fair comparison of near-synonymic intensifiers with respect to a number of parameters of variation or textual preferences on the morpho-syntactic, lexico-semantic and discourse-pragmatic levels. It is intended as the first step in a comprehensive study of English and Italian predicate-intensifiers collocations. Among its expected applications are a combinatory dictionary of English intensifiers and a bilingual combinatory dictionary of English and Italian intensifiers.