INTENSITY AND OTHER MEANINGS: IDENTIFYING LEXICAL INTENSIFIERS IN CONTEXT (BASED ON THE STUDY OF FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY’S CORRESPONDENCE)

The study considers the development of the meaning of intensity in lexical items of different semantic classes. The words of various semantic groups can gain the meaning of intensity due to metonymic and metaphorical transfers as the semantics of intensity can be implied by the original lexical meaning and comes with its loss, the desemantization. New intensifi ers constantly appear in individual speech, some words can easily turn into occasional intensifi ers or can be seen as transitional elements with syncretic semantics. The article presents several semantic classes of words, as well as some characteristic lexical items, that typically become intensifi ers in Dostoevsky’s personal letters: these are adjectives and adverbs denoting temporal aspects of the situation, the large quantity, the boundedness, the modal evaluation of situation and some emotions. The factors of the semantic shifts are the original meaning of the intensifi er, the original meaning of the main word, the internal processes of semantic change and also the context: certain syntactic constructions, lexical environment and stylistic features of the text. The research deals with Dostoevsky’s personal correspondence and is mainly focused on the description of Dostoevsky’s individual writing style, however, the presented patterns also illustrate possibilities of occasional semantic shifts in individual speech and general principles of semantic development.