Intensifiers

The label ‘intensifiers’ (or ‘emphatics’) groups together words, widely attested crosslinguistically (e.g. Eng. x-self, Germ. selbst, Ital. stesso, Lat. ipse, Japanese zisin and zibun, Mandarin zı j ĭetc.), whose main function is to signal some sort of emphasis or focus with respect to a nominal head they are adjoined to in the sentence, as in The author herself will present the book. In addition to the term ‘intensifiers’ (Moravcsik 1972; Edmondson and Plank 1978), there exist many other labels in the relevant literature to define this sub-class of functional words, which reflect the (anything but closed) debate on their actual categorial status. This entry discuss the origin and the function of the prototypical Ancient Greek intensifier, autós, which is classified among (demonstrative) pronouns.