The Change of English Intensifiers : A Corpus-based Analysis on Friends and How I Met Your Mother

Abstract

Amplifiers are considered one of the most interesting grammatical features to study for their versatility and tendency to change quickly. Amplifiers are also often linked with colloquial usage and female speakers. The purpose of this study is to investigate the competition of different English amplifiers in American TV sitcoms in the past decade, the current standings of the selected amplifiers, and whether the TV sitcoms reflect the actual amplifier use in contemporary American English. This study also aims to explore the types of adjectives and verbs collocated with the selected amplifiers, and the sociolinguistic correlation between the amplifier use and gender.