This thesis examines whether the neoclassical intensifiers extra-, hyper-, mega-, super-, and ultra- are in competition, and if so, whether this competition is leaning towards adaptation of the...Show moreThis thesis examines whether the neoclassical intensifiers extra-, hyper-, mega-, super-, and ultra- are in competition, and if so, whether this competition is leaning towards adaptation of the various forms to different uses or towards extinction of one or several forms. In order to collect data to answer the research questions, the Corpus of Contemporary American English was used. For each individual neoclassical intensifier, a random sample of approximately 100 tokens was extracted from the corpus. The data were then analysed for their independency, the category of the base word, whether the intensifiers were used in a positive, negative or neutral context, and their meaning or function, including replaceability. The results suggest that the five neoclassical intensifier do compete, and that this competition is leaning towards adaptation of the various forms on different levels.Show less
