Prosodic Intensification: Between Grammar and Pragmatics

The study of scalar meanings or intensification has focused primarily on morphological means, yet there are many spoken languages where these concepts are expressed systematically by iconic prosody. Languages employ a combination of prosodic cues, including increased duration, raised pitch, special pitch patterns, and special voice quality, to signal scalar increases of property concepts, quantity, exhaustivity, duration, and so forth. In some languages, attitudinal meanings may also be expressed. Various labels have been used to refer to these iconic prosodic processes; below, the term prosodic intensification is used. This crosslinguistic overview looks at prosodic intensification from several angles: its phonetic realization (and orthographic representation), its meanings, its target domains, its iconic properties, and its status within each language's system (grammar or pragmatics?). It is shown that prosodic intensification is common not only in lesser-known languages but also in spoken and/or informal written registers of well-known languages and that this phenomenon is likely underreported. It is suggested that the underreporting of prosodic intensification, as well as researchers’ reluctance to treat its functions as part of grammar, is due to a persistent scholarly bias toward morphosyntactic over prosodic means.