The intensifiers this/that can be traced back to the fourteenth century, when these deictic demonstratives acquired an adverbial status as a result of a grammaticalization process by means of which they became degree adverbs with the meaning of ‘to this/that extent, so much, so’ (OED s.v. this/that adv.). The present paper contributes to the study of the development of intensifiers through the grammaticalization of deictic demonstratives analyzing the use and distribution of these intensifiers with the following objectives: (a) to trace their origin and grammaticalization as degree words in English; (b) to analyze their development over time; (c) to assess their distribution across register/text types; and (d) to cast light on the lexico-semantic structure of the right-hand collocates in terms of their mode of construal. The study concludes that the deictive function of demonstratives contributed to the adoption of their degree meaning in Late Middle English. The construction disseminated in the early nineteenth century as a typical resource of spoken English and both forms have progressed to where they can impose a scalar construal on adjectives for which scale is not the default construal. The evidence comes from the Corpus of Historical American English and the Corpus of Contemporary American English.

中文翻译：

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没有猫会那么饿！这/那作为美式英语中的强化词

强化词 this/that 可以追溯到十四世纪，当这些指示指示词由于语法化过程而获得状语地位时，它们成为程度副词，意思是“到这个/那个程度，这么多，所以'（OED sv this/that adv.）。本论文通过对指示指示词的语法化分析这些增强词的使用和分布，有助于研究增强词的发展，目的如下：(a) 追溯它们作为英语程度词的起源和语法化；(b) 分析它们随时间的发展；(c) 评估它们在注册/文本类型中的分布；(d) 根据解释模式阐明右手搭配的词汇语义结构。该研究得出的结论是，指示词的指示功能有助于在中古英语中采用它们的程度含义。该结构在 19 世纪早期作为英语口语的典型资源传播，并且这两种形式都已经发展到可以对比例不是默认解释的形容词施加标量解释。证据来自美国历史英语语料库和当代美国英语语料库。