A Variationist Sociolinguistic Analysis of Intensifiers in Oslo Norwegian

Abstract

The present study uses variationist sociolinguistic methods to examine the intensifier system in Oslo Norwegian. Results indicate that both linguistic and social factors influence intensifier use. Predicative adjectives were intensified more frequently than attributive adjectives, women used intensifiers more frequently than men, and younger speakers had higher intensification rates than older speakers. Apparent time analyses also reveal a change in progress toward the use of skikkelig ‘proper’, a change led predominantly by young women. Although veldig ‘very’ was the most frequently used intensifier, its use decreases in apparent time, whereas skikkelig increases in frequency among younger speakers. The development of the intensifier skikkelig appears to follow a common pathway of change from adjective to manner adjunct to degree adverb, as well as from appropriateness to intensification. Comparisons with work on English, German, and Norwegian reveal several crosslinguistic tendencies about the linguistic and social conditioning of intensifiers. This study provides the first variationist sociolinguistic analysis of intensifiers in Oslo Norwegian; it provides support for several crosslinguistic claims about intensifier use; and it contributes to the visibility of variationist sociolinguistic work in the study of Norwegian variation and change.

Adverb-adjective combinations in young writers’ English (EL1 and EL2)

“…On the basis of previous research, amplifiers were expected to be more frequent than downtoners; however, there is nothing to suggest that downtoners are less frequent in Norwegian than in English: in Stratton & Sundquist's (2022) investigation of intensifiers in spoken Norwegian, downtoners account for almost 30% of the intensifiers. Furthermore, Norwegian advanced learners have been found to use more downtoners than EL1 users in their academic writing (Hasselgård, 2015).…”

“…As regards the syntactic functions of the modified adjective phrases, the EL1 writing showed a more varied picture than the EL2 writing in TRAWL, especially in producing a higher proportion of attributive phrases and in using postposition of adjectives to some extent. Norwegian and English original fiction are similar in the proportions of attributive vs. predicative position of amplified adjective phrases, according to Wilhelmsen (2019, p. 67), while the proportion of predicative position is somewhat lower in spoken Norwegian (Stratton & Sundquist, 2022); hence the difference should not be due the learners being influenced by their L1. The use of attributive adjective phrases is linked to noun phrase complexity (see Rørvik, 2022), as such phrases are premodifiers of nouns.…”

Where didwergo? Lexical variation and change in third-person male adult noun referents in Old and Middle English

“…In recent decades, variationist quantitative methods have been used to examine a range of discourse-pragmatic phenomena, such as intensifiers (e.g., Stratton, 2020, 2022a; Stratton & Sundquist, 2022; Tagliamonte, 2008), quotatives (e.g., Tagliamonte & D'Arcy, 2004), general extenders (e.g., Cheshire, 2007), and evidentiality markers (e.g., Tagliamonte & Smith, 2021). Although geography is often reported as the predominant explanatory factor for lexical variation, lexis is highly structured along the axes of social and stylistic variation.…”