Lexico-functional categories in Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language: the case of intensifiers

This paper investigates in what ways and to what extent Noah Webster accounts for different types and degrees of intensification within the enormously varied and ever-changing lexico-functional category of intensifiers, varying along dimensions such as connotations, type and degree of expressivity, and style and register restrictions as well. Specifically, we shall investigate inclusion and characterization of intensifiers in Naah Webster’s American Dictionary against the background of Dr Johnson’s 1755 Dictionary using their electronic editions both as a dictionary and as a corpus. Reference will be made to the Oxford English Dictionary online up to 1828 for comparison. Essentially, after compiling the intensifiers wordlist of Webster’s and Johnson’s dictionaries, we shall compare their treatment touching upon definition practices, usage labels and notes, examples and quotations. The main emphasis will be on Webster’s lexicographic achievement rather than on his debt to Johnson.