Download lexical emphasis - Professor Flavia Cunha

LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Profª. Flávia Cunha
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
It is achieved by means of special
words or phrases.
Certain words tend to be emphatic
because of their lexical, semantic
content.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
There are two main reasons for emphasizing a
particular word:
Emotive emphasis (to confer emotive stress
on what is said; to show we feel strongly
about what we are saying)
e.g. You do look nice today!
Your hair looks so good like that.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Contrastive emphasis (to show contrast
between, for example, true and false, or
present and past, or a rule and an exception)
e.g. Why weren’t you at the meeting? - I was
at the meeting.
I don’t do much sport now, but I did play
football when I was younger.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Emphatic DO:
an entire sentence receives greater emphasis if the
auxiliary is stressed. DO is introduced when no
auxiliary verb is present to carry emphatic stress:
It does taste nice!
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Do occurs as a marker of emphasis in affirmative
declarative sentences which have no BE copula or
auxiliary verb. It also occurs in the two following
constructions:
Emphatic affirmative imperative (even those with the
copula)
Do come in!
Do be honest this time!
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Affirmative wh-questions that ask about the
subject:
What did happen?
Who does earn that kind of money?
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Emphatic Reflexive: to emphasize nouns,
reflexive pronouns are often used.
Consider the following sentences:
The owner himself built the house.
The owner built the house himself.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Only sentence a, where the reflexive pronoun
directly follows the noun it is modifying, can
truly be considered emphatic use of the reflexive
pronoun
(‘that
person/thing
and
nobody/nothing else’).
Sentence b represents an adverbial function of
the reflexive pronoun (by himself – ‘alone,
without company, without help’).
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
E m p h a t i c
o w n
Possessive adjectives that modify a head noun
can be made emphatic by the addition of own,
which in turn can be intensified by the addition
of very. The use of emphatic own with a
possessive adjective or noun usually signals the
m e a n i n g
o f
o w n e r s h i p .
e.g. After having accepted his analysis of
comparative sentences for years, I later
developed my own theory about such sentences.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Emphatic Adjectives and Adverbs:
Emphatic (intensifying) adjectives occur only
in attributive position:
e.g. He is a mere child.
That is pure fabrication.
You bloody fool!
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Emphatic adverbs are mostly degree (intensifying)
adverbs and other degree expressions, intensifying
the meaning of the words they modify (very, indeed,
utterly, definitely, truly, certainly, really, etc.)
e.g. I was very surprised indeed.
I certainly like that color on you.
She’d like a bottle of your very best wine.
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Wh- question words can be emphasized by
adding: ever, on earth, the hell.
e.g. Why ever did he marry her?
What on earth is she doing here?
Where the hell have you been?
SPEAKING EMPHATICALLY
LEXICAL EMPHASIS
Bibliography:
• Swan, Michael. Practical English usage.
(2005) Oxford: OUP.
• Larsen-Freeman, Diane & Celce-Murcia
Marianne. (1983).The Grammar Book: An
ESL/EFL Teacher’s Course