Intensified Classifiers

Matthiessen (1995: 664-5):

The adjectives that regularly serve as Classifiers - adjectives of provenance (Chinese, Burmese, Australian), of material (wooden, metallic, plastic), for example - are closer to the domain of nouns on the scale from prototypical adjectives to prototypical nouns. For instance, they are not scalar and intensifiable but form n-nary taxonomic oppositions (instead of binary scalar oppositions such as tall - short ). Thus we would not expect to get very metamorphic rocks. ¹²⁹

¹²⁹ But we do find examples such as a thoroughly modern woman, a very post-modern discourse, a very French attitude; more French than the French. Here the intensification seems to be concerned either with degree of (proto)typicality rather than value on a single scale or with some particular aspect that is characteristic of the quality.

Blogger Comments:

To be clear, the fact that intensification is possible in such instances suggests that the words are serving as Epithets, rather than Classifiers. Moreover, they can be seen to serve as interpersonal Epithets, since they express the speaker's attitude toward the Thing in question (Halliday & Matthiessen 2014: 376).