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Volume 60, Issue 2
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Abstract

Abstract

This article aims to trace the grammaticalization and recent social diffusion of the intensifier . Despite its high frequency in the language of Madrilenian teenagers, this linguistic innovation of the late 20th century has not been studied in detail to date. To this end, a real-time analysis is carried out, based on two highly comparable samples of youth speech data, recorded at two different moments in the 21st century: or COLAm (2003–2007) and youth conversations from the or CORMA (2019). The results highlight that passed through a process of grammaticalization from collective noun to multifunctional intensifier, including reanalysis and host class expansion (Traugott, 2008), and bring to light innovative pragmatic uses. The sociolinguistic analysis suggests that the social diffusion of can be understood as a “change from below” (Eckert, 2003).

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2025-08-20
2026-03-09

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La evolución reciente del intensificador mazo (de) en el lenguaje juvenil madrileño
Revue Romane. Langue et littérature 60, 267 (2025); https://doi.org/10.1075/rro.23002.roe
/content/journals/10.1075/rro.23002.roe
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  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): corpus linguistics; grammaticalization; intensifier; Madrid; mazo (de); real-time analysis; Spanish; teenage talk

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