Abstract In American English, the intensifier totally presents a pragmatic use, in which it
strengthens the speaker's commitment towards the utterance (eg 'The Bulls will totally make …

The ability to convey meaning is a fundamental property of human language. Three main
aspects, in particular, have drawn the attention of linguists: semantic meaning, that is, the …

Studies within the third-wave approach have unveiled the fluid nature of social meanings,
showing how speakers can creatively recruit and recombine linguistic resources to make …

This paper investigates the approximative nature of-ish, which takes its origin in de-
adjectival adjectives in Middle English and from there spreads to-ish-derivatives from a wide …

Drawing on a wide array of historical and contemporary corpora, this article provides one of
the first empirical analyses of the intricately related functional changes that-ish underwent in …

This article deals with the morphosyntactic and semantic properties of the adjectives derived
with the English morpheme-ish. The main goal of the paper is to outline a morphosyntactic …

Grammaticalization is traditionally defined as the gradual process whereby a lexical item
becomes a grammatical item (primary grammaticalization), which may be followed by further …

. On the notion of extravagance is volume focuses on morphological extravagance as arising
through speakers' innovative realisations of abstract patterns. e term “extravagant” harks …

We present a novel semantic and conversational framework for a class of gradable-like
constructions. These include metalinguistic comparatives, like 'Ann is more a linguist than a …

Language change is as unpredictable as the tides […] What level on the beach will the
incoming tide reach tomorrow? Will the wavelets hit that pebble? Who can say? It depends …