6.4.2.7. Adverbs of degree
LSC uses different modifiers to indicate degree, such as strong, hard, intense, which express intensity.
university gemma work hard.
‘Gemma works hard at the university.’
These adverbs may be modified to express different degrees of intensity. For instance, the adverb strong may express three different degrees of intensity: i) the basic one, its citation form, which does not imply any trajectory movement, ii) the medium one, in which the articulators are tenser and the movement is larger, and iii) the extreme one, in which the articulators are tensed to the extreme and the movement is displayed repeatedly in an even larger trajectory.
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strong - Citation form |
strong - Medium degree |
strong - Extreme degree |
(© Eulàlia Ribera 2015. Reprinted with permission from Ribera, 2015: 399)
However, there are some modifiers, like little, that do not admit changes in their morphophonological characteristics. In this case, the medium degree and the extreme degree are differentiated from the citation form by the facial expression, as shown in the images below.
| little - Citation form | little - Medium degree | little - Extreme degree |
(© Eulàlia Ribera 2015. Reprinted with permission from Ribera, 2015: 401)