A novel dichotomy of the Korean adverb nemwu in opinion classification

While the adverb nemwu, roughly equivalent to the intensifier too in English, has been considered an adverb that intensifies gradable predicates in excess, thereby provoking a negative interpretation, it can also be used to emphasize a positive evaluation in online subjective texts. Moreover, even in the sentences conveying a negative evaluation, only some of the occurrences of nemwu are used as a polarity reversing valence shifter. This paper proposes a novel dichotomy for the usages of nemwu, consisting of ‘Intensifying Adverbs’ (IAs) and ‘Opinion Introducers’ (OIs), and examines the necessary contexts for determining the function of the adverb.