Expressive intensifiers and external degree modification

Abstract Varieties of colloquial German exhibit a special class of degree expression, including expressions like sau, voll and total, which we call expressive intensifiers (EIs) and which have received almost no attention in the literature. EIs are distinguished from ordinary degree intensifiers like very by several special syntactic properties. Most importantly, they can appear in what we call the external degree modification construction (EDC), a construction of the form [EI D (A) NP]. Despite preceding the determiner in these constructions, the EI still intensifies the adjective or noun ins... Mehr ...