“Estaban en gran cuita y en fiero pesar”. Intensive N + A collocations in medieval Spanish

Abstract

This work offers a first approach to medieval collocations with intensive value N+Adj. More specifically, four groups of semantically related adjectives are studied, as their intensive meaning was the result of metaphorization processes: metaphorization of size, metaphorization of strength, metaphorization of qualities and metaphorization of space. Although intensive value adjectives tend to select several semantic-syntactic classes and, therefore, distinct predicates within each of these classes, it is possible to find out significant variations between them. Most of the adjectives which give rise to collocations express intensification in a positive degree, and their use is linked to their spreading through the language in time and space, to their relationship with the adverbs in -mente associated or, to a lesser extent, to their particular spreading in certain thematic areas specially represented in the corpus; adjectives with an average degree and adjectives with an attenuating value hardly gave rise to specific combinations. In fact, only one of the adjectives belonging to the last group (flaco) can be considered as an integral part of the collocations in this period.