Intensification and deintensification in Modern Greek verbs

Abstract

This paper aims at examining the morphological means of intensification and deintensification in Modern Greek deverbal verbs. First, it will be shown that in Modern Greek deverbal verbs the meaning of intensification (and deintensification) is almost always expressed by prepositional prefixes or prefixoids: e.g. para-cimáme ‘to oversleep’, iper-fortóno ‘to overload, scilo-varjéme ‘to be bored to death’ (scilo- ‘dog’+ varjéme ‘to be bored’), kutso-vlépo ‘to see poorly’ (kutso- ‘lame’+ vlépo ‘see’); see also Efthymiou (2017). Secondly, it will be demonstrated that in Modern Greek deverbal verbs the meaning of intensification is mostly expressed by prepositional prefixes, while the meaning of deintensification (attenuation) is almost always expressed by prefixoids. Thirdly, it will be shown that in Modern Greek, the system of intensifying and deintensifying morphemes has emerged via the processes of grammaticalisation (e.g. the prefixization of full lexical items like scilo- ‘dog’, kutso- ‘lame’, etc.) and refunctionalisation (e.g. the prepositional prefixes iper-, para-, which have developed evaluative meanings) or via borrowing (e.g. the MG colloquial intensive prefix kara- ‘very’, from the Turkish adjective kara ‘black’: kara-tsekáro ‘to check very thoroughly’). Finally, it will be suggested that a) the diversity of evaluative derivational processes (e.g. kutso-vlépo ‘to see poorly’, psilo-vlépo ‘to see a bit’) is largely determined by linguistic factors (e.g. selectional constraints, differences in meaning, etc.) and that b) each evaluative morpheme under investigation is rather potentiating within a certain domain (e.g. the learned prefix iper- expresses quantitative evaluation, the colloquial prefix kara- has an emotive/pragmatic meaning, etc.).

Keywords

• intensification
• deintensification
• evaluative morphemes
• verbs
• Modern Greek
• pragmatic meaning