Article published in:
Hispanic Linguistics at the Crossroads: Theoretical linguistics, language acquisition and language contact. Proceedings of the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium 2013
Edited by Rachel Klassen, Juana M. Liceras and Elena Valenzuela
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 4] 2015
► pp. 231–250

Morphological adjectival intensifier variation in Lima, Peru

| Arizona State University
This variationist study is the first addressing the alternation of adjectival intensifiers -ísimo (standard) and -azo (non-standard) in Spanish, concretely, in the Limeño variety of Peru.Using online digitalized corpora, online journals, magazines, and e-networks, I conducted a multivariate analysis of this alternation. The results show that language use in colloquial texts of e-networks favor the use of -azo, as well as male speakers, which suggests covert prestige. Semantically negative adjectives, commonly used in colloquial texts, also favor the non-standard variant. Interestingly, stative/resultative constructions of the form estar + participle with an experiencer argument promote the use of -azo, suggesting that it is more specialized than -ísimo, which has a broader distribution.
Keywords: e-networks, intensifier, Peru, style, variation
Published online: 30 July 2015
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.4.12cer
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