Ord i kombination - En undersökning av några adjektiv som uttrycker 'hög grad'

• The study presented in this article attempts to investigate the semantic preferences of three Swedish adjectives when used as attributes to express ’a high degree’ of a noun head word: hård (Eng. hard or severe), kraftig (Eng. powerful) and stark (Eng. strong). In some semantic contexts the three adjectives seem practically interchangeable, while in other contexts only one of them sounds “correct”. For example, ‘a high degree’ of the word vind (Eng. wind or breeze) can be expressed by any of the adjectives hård, kraftig or stark, but ‘a high degree’ of the word känsla (Eng. feeling) is normally expressed only by the adjective stark. Through corpus searches and through organizing the head nouns into semantic fields I try to establish the semantic contexts in which the adjectives hård, kraftig and stark can be used to express ‘a high degree’ of a noun. The objective is to disclose semantic patterns that language users are more or less unaware of. The present investigation constitutes a pilot study of a larger research project on the use of intensifying Swedish adjectives.

Ämnesord

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Studier av enskilda språk (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- Specific Languages (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

adjektiv

'hög grad'

ordförbindelser

semantiska preferenser

semantiska restriktioner

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

kon (ämneskategori)