O subiektywizacji w procesie kształtowania się intensyfikatorów (na przykładzie ogromnie)
On subjectivisation in the process of the intensifiers formation (on an example of Polish ogromnie [‘enormously’])

Summary/Abstract: The article presents subjectivisation as the process that initiated changes that transformed the adverb ogromnie (‘enormously’) into an intensifier. Subjectivisation is understood as a process in which a sender communicates a message presenting object, features, activities or processes situating them on his scale of values. The fixation of meaning in the semantic structure of the unit of language whose source is the speaker’s evaluation is called intersubjectivisation. The analysed linguistic material comes from the Electronic Corpus of 17th- and 18th-century Polish Texts (up to 1772), the Polish Language Corpus 1830–1918 and the National Corpus of Polish. The study consisted in contextual analysis of linguistic units’ semantic and syntactic properties in the form ogromnie. It was established that even in the 16th century, the adverb ogromnie functioned in the meanings resulting from its etymology, that is related to the meaning of the root -grom-. In the subsequent stages of the development of Polish, there appeared a process of lexicalization, i.e. breaking the semantic link between ogromnie and the base adverb. The intensifier expanded its categorial connectivity compared to the adverb but limited its semantic connectivity, and it coexists only with graded predicates. In contemporary it has entirely lost its connection with its etymon and is an independent language unit belonging to the metatextual level of language. The historical analysis of the intensifier ogromnie made it possible to draw both detailed and more general conclusions relating to the role of subjectivisation in the formation of the metatextual level of language. This change is semantic-pragmatic and consists in fading of the lexical meaning and development of a general meaning related to the speaker’s assessment of a given fragment of reality.

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