LINGUIST List 7.654

Sat May 4 1996

Sum: "terrible" emphasis

Editor for this issue: T. Daniel Seely <dseelyemunix.emich.edu>

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1. "Dr. Elke Hentschel", "terrible" emphasis

Dear colleagues,

two weeks ago, I posted the following query:

>While considering expressions like "terribly nice" or "awfully
>kind", I became interested in the question of the universality of this
>kind of emphasis. I know it occurs in German and in Serbocroatian as well -
>but what about other languages? Any example is welcome.

I have received about 40 answers; THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH FOR YOUR HELP! 

So far, I have been able to compile the following list of languages (in 
alphabetical order) that have similar expressions:

Afrikaans	Cairene Arabic
Basque		Bulgarian
Catalan		Chinese
Corean		Dutch
English		Farsi
Finnish		French
German		modern Greek
modern Hebrew 	Hungarian		
Japanese	Polish		
Portugese	Russian		
Serbo-Croat	Slovak		
Spanish		Swedish		
Turkish		Yuroba		

It seems that expressions like "terribly nice" are indeed a wide-spread 
and possibly even universal phenomenon, and I am sure it occurs in much 
more languages than I have been able to gather so far. 

If anybody knows a language that should be added to the list, I would be 
_awfully kind_ :) of them to let me know! 

Thank you very much in advance

Elke Hentschel

jasamzedat.fu-berlin.de
eloufjdbsp.zrz.tu-berlin.de