ABSTRACT This paper presents a corpus-based study on the origin and development of a death-related intensifier: the adjective and adverb mortal. Drawing on a variety of historical sources, it will be shown that mortal has progressively come to adopt more general meanings, i.e., it has come to be grammaticalised as an intensifier over time. The history of this form will be explored through a collocational analysis and in the light of two key semantic variables: type of meaning (descriptive, affective, or intensifying) and semantic prosody. The paper focuses on British English and covers the history of mortal from its adoption in Middle English to the close of the nineteenth century.

中文翻译：

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凡人匆忙与凡人罚款：正在加剧凡人的兴起

摘要 本文提出了一项基于语料库的研究，研究了与死亡相关的强化词的起源和发展：形容词和副词 mortal。借鉴各种历史资料，将表明 mortal 逐渐采用更一般的含义，即，随着时间的推移，它已被语法化为强化词。这种形式的历史将通过搭配分析并根据两个关键的语义变量进行探索：意义类型（描述性、情感性或强化）和语义韵律。该论文侧重于英式英语，涵盖了从中古英语采用到 19 世纪末的凡人历史。