Actividad: “El acero tiene su historia”

Evidence of a new emphasizer function of completely is found in the data for LModE (cf. table 5.1). Since the examples are not very numerous (accounting for only 2% of the instances from this initial period, made up of only 11 actual tokens), the deductions made with regard to this use inevitably remain somewhat tentative. Nevertheless, it is interesting to examine because it is not recorded in any of the prior sources on completely (cf.

discussion of the OED entry in section 1).

Example (34) illustrates its use in the context of a verbal collocate (‘project’), though judging by the corpus data, it appears to be more common with nominal collocates (see e.g. (35) and (36), below).

(34) There is a picture of this subject by the young and singularly gifted artist, the late Oliver Madox Brown, more generally known as a novelist, which is one of the few pictorial interpretations that seem to completely project on the canvas a visible embodiment of the spirit of the original.

(CLMETEV: Blind, M. 1883. George Eliot.)

(35) It was evident that the gentleman (completely a gentleman in manner) admired her exceedingly.

(ARCHER: Austen, J. 1818. Persuasion.)

(36) the guide…had the talent of finding out and seeing uncommon likenesses in the different forms of the stalactite…here was a lion’s claw, nothing but flesh and blood wanting to make it completely a claw!

(CLMETEV: Gillman, J. 1838. The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.)

In this function, the meaning of completely is somewhat akin to present-day ‘really’ or ‘truly’ and it serves to reinforce the application of the description it precedes. For instance, in (35) it is used to communicate that the description ‘a gentleman’ is ‘truly’ accurate, i.e. that the person in question possesses all the necessary characteristics to warrant that description. Similarly, in (36), it is communicated that the description ‘a claw’ would be ‘truly’

appropriate were it for the addition of the two missing characteristics, flesh and blood. In (34), where the modified constituent is verbal, a maximizer reading is rendered unfeasible, since, at least in the context of this example, the verb project cannot be graded for degree.

Rather, the adverb seems to serve as a means of highlighting the relative uniqueness that the picture in question achieves by communicating the suggested surprising fact that it actually succeeds in representing ‘a visible embodiment of the spirit of the original’. As the focus is on whether this is ‘projected’ or not, completely, in this context, appears to be employed in an emphasizer capacity, indicating that the picture ‘really/truly projects’ the aforesaid ‘embodiment’. The fact that the information is presented as something contrary to the norm (cf. ‘one of the few’) lends support to this analysis since it suggests a context in which a speaker is likely to want to employ a device to further emphasize the epistemic commitment of a proposition.

Given the close functional link noted in a number of the LModE examples between the maximizer and emphasizer functions of completely (see discussion above in connection to examples such as (22) and (23)), and the fact that the former was well-established prior to any evidence of the latter, it seems likely that the emphasizer function developed from the maximizer sense. To this effect, the use of maximizer completely in the context of such constituents exemplified in (22) and (23) that only accept modification by maximizing degree modifiers may therefore have been a possible contributing factor to this

development. In further support of this, it is noted that instances of the use of maximizer completely in such contexts appear to dominate across all three periods, though it is difficult to state this with certainty with respect to the EModE period because of the low number of overall examples for this stage. Certainly in the LModE and PDE data, the distribution of this type is 66% and 61%, respectively, i.e. there are over twice as many instances of this type compared with ones in which the modified constituent permits modification by various types of degree modifier. Moreover, the peak of the dominance in the LModE period coincides with the initial surge of emphasizer examples. Due to the notion of completeness that is inherent to the constituents modified in this type of example, the collocation with completely, as an indicator of maximum degree, is actually redundant. It is this fact that it seems could have eventually led to the emphasizer use of completely. In the context of constituents that themselves denote maximum degree, it seems likely that the adverb started to be associated more with emphasis than degree, since this opened up the

possibility of interpreting it as a device for reinforcing the appropriateness of an application, rather than denoting degree. Following frequent use in such contexts (as is indicated by the high proportion of this type in the corpora), it seems likely that the logical deduction that completely adds emphasis became more frequent, eventually leading to the use of completely in contexts where a degree reading is not possible, and therefore where an emphasizer function is clear.

Although there is evidence of continued use of completely in this emphasizer function in the present-day data (see table 5.1), the figures indicate that it remains unpopular, having in fact even decreased in frequency to less than 1%.

4. Summary

Based on the corpus evidence, the native adverbialization of the adverb completely from the adjective complete was attributed to the EModE period (see section 3.1), with the earliest example of the adverb from the data dating from 1622. Despite an entry for this item in the MED containing three illustrative examples from the previous ME period, the analysis suggested that these should perhaps be treated as reflecting the specific language of translated texts and thus not necessarily representative of common native usage. In light of this, they were marginalised and the conclusion, based on the corpus evidence, is that the adverb was first used in common native usage in the EModE period. Its

subsequent development is summarised in figure 5.1, below.

Figure 5.1 Diagram of the development of completely

Among the limited instances of completely retrieved from the EModE data,

evidence of a manner adverb use was found in cases in which the adverb occurs with verbal constituents that do not accept modification by degree, and its only plausible function is to

MANNER ADVERB completely

(‘in a complete/perfect manner’)

MAXIMIZER completely (TYPE 1) (‘to the fullest extent’)  Modifying constituents that accept

modification by varyingdegree.

EMPHASIZER completely

(‘truly, really’, adding force as distinct from degree) MAXIMIZER completely (TYPE 2)

(‘to the fullest extent’)  Modifying constituents that inherently

denote ‘completeness’, and only accept modification by maximum degree.

provide a comment on the manner of those constituents. However, simultaneous clear evidence of a maximizer use can be observed in cases where completely is used to modify an adjectival constituent. Due to the close proximity of the initial instances of each of these functions, it was impossible to determine conclusively on the basis of the attestation dates alone which of the senses emerged first and thus how the development of the maximizer use took place. However, in conjunction with the quantitative analysis and drawing comparison from the development of other maximizers, it was proposed that the manner use was the initial sense, with the maximizer one emerging via the extension of the former to contexts with constituents that can be graded for degree. The fact that this aspect of the development of completely was suggested to have taken place very soon after the

emergence of the initial manner function was accounted for by means of the proposed likelihood of speakers having drawn analogies with adverbs similar to completely (e.g. absolutely) which were recruited to the maximizer class at an earlier stage (see e.g. in this connection, Traugott 2008 on the influence of so called ‘attractor sets’).

The maximizer function of completely dominates throughout all periods of

investigation, with the manner adverb function ceasing to be found in the corpora after the LModE period. More specifically, the initial maximizer use was found to be in the context of collocates that only permit modification by maximum degree (labelled ‘type 2’ in figure 5.1), yet this had extended, by LModE (in a similar way to absolutely (see chapter 4) to constituents that can accept modification by varying degree (referred to as ‘type 1’ in figure 5.1). This latter period also sees the rise of an emphasizer use of completely in the context of constituents (most typically nominal) that cannot be graded for degree. The evidence indicates that this emphasizer use developed from the maximizer one, but following a somewhat brief surge in the LModE period, it accounts for less than 1% of the PDE data, suggesting that it never really propagated.

On examining the use of the most prominent maximizer function in more detail, it emerged that it is most typically used throughout its history to modify verbal and adjectival constituents. In support of the findings of Greenbaum (1974), Vermeire (1979) and Paradis (1997), the analysis reveals a very strong tendency in the PDE data for these to have negative connotations or at least contain a negative affix. Furthermore, the analysis of the LModE data indicates that this was also true in earlier usage. Despite the overall tendency, some variation was noted depending on the word class of the constituent, viz. that several semantically positive adjectival elements are recorded alongside the majority of negative ones, yet there is considerably less evidence of this among the verbal elements, which retain a much stronger negative bias.

As Vermeire (1979) found in present-day data, combinations with prepositional constituents are the third most common in both the LModE and the PDE data. These combinations are interesting in that they show a steady increase in popularity between the two periods, which is perhaps indicative of more recent and on-going change. However, as this use is still comparatively infrequent in both periods, the analysis focused on where the more substantial claims could be made, i.e. on the more frequent combinations with adjectival and verbal constituents.

Finally, as mentioned briefly above, the collocational analysis revealed two main contexts of use of maximizer completely, viz. with constituents that accept various types of degree modification and with ones that only accept degree modification by maximizers. In line with the account of absolutely in the previous chapter, this offers further evidence of the existence of two ‘sub-types’ of maximizer. In this respect, it raises the same issue of the validity of the maximizer class as it is currently described in the literature (cf. e.g. Allerton 1987 and Paradis 1997, amongst others, as well as standard grammars such as Quirk et al. 1985 and Huddleston & Pullum 2002), and thus, once more, questions the nature of the distinction between maximizers and emphasizers and supports the need for a more fine- grained description of each of these functions and a more detailed consideration of what it is that sets them apart.

CHAPTER 6: The development of entirely