Good evening, afternoon, or morning to you, people of r/conlangs. Today's Saturday, and that means it's time for another typological paper! Once again, there will be some prompts for you to discuss in the comments.
Focused assertion of identity: A typology of intensifiers (König & Gast)
This week's paper was submitted by u/wmblathers and talks about the different ways in which languages handle intensifiers. The paper presents several cross-linguistic patterns and also describes the various uses of intensifiers, a class of words such as "himself/herself" in English, "selbst" in German or "ipse/ipsa" in Latin. Now onto the prompts:
- How do you express intensification in your language?
- Do your language's patterns line up with the cross-linguistic patterns described in the paper?
- If you considered diachrony while creating your language, how did intensifiers arise? (Common grammaticalization paths include e.g. body parts, expressions for "one/alone" or lexical items referring to concepts like "soul" or "life")
- How do intensifiers interact with other parts of your language's morphosyntax? (E.g. are there any restrictions on their usage in certain constructions?)
Remember to try to comment on other people's languages
Submit your papers here!
So, that's about it for this week's edition. See you next Saturday, and happy conlanging!