ABCTRACT This master's thesis is focused on Finnish intensification expressions in the form of the genitive case of adjectives and on adjectives intensified by them. Research is carried out in the form of corpus-based analysis for the purpose of seeing if semantics of intensification expressions affect the possibility of their combination with intensified adjectives. The first chapters of the thesis are dedicated to the theoretical study of semantic relationships and intensification. First of all, the corpus analysis attention focuses on what semantic features intensification expressions themselves have. Intensification expressions are categorized into groups on the basis of these features. Three of the groups are a subject of a more detailed analysis. Each group is represented by three intensification enpressions whose adjective collocations and wider context are examined. The purpose of this part of the analysis is to find out if different groups of intensification expressions appear in different contexts and if expressions belonging to the same group prefer a combination with the same adjectives. Key words: Finnish, intensification expressions, semantic preference and prosody, adjectives, corpus-based analysis

Diskursprosodi och semantisk preferens är inneboende aspekter i språk, då inget ord existerar som en isolerad enhet så snart det är en del av en text. Syftet med denna studie var att kvantitativt undersöka August Strindbergs bruk av orden ’kvinna’ och ’man’. Materialet som låg till grund för studien utgjordes av trilogin Röda Rummet, Götiska Rummen och Svarta Fanor. För att göra det undersöktes ordens förekomst med avseende på frekvens, grad av emotionell laddning i sammansättningar, och distribution av lexikaliserade sammansättningar. Därutöver undersöktes kontexten för lemman kvinna och man, genom en kartläggning av diskursprosodi och semantisk preferens för kollokationerna för kvinna och man. Syftet var att kartlägga detta ur ett diakront perspektiv. Resultaten visade att män omtalas, i lemmaform, i större utsträckning än kvinnor i trilogin. Sammansättningar för man är oftast lexikaliserade, medan de för kvinna är det mycket mer sällan. Kvinnor färgas oftare negativt i sammansättningar med kvinna medan motsvarigheten för män nästan alltid är neutral i sin emotionella laddning. Kollokationsanalysen kunde inte säkert visa på Strindbergs attityder gentemot kvinnor och män. Mer data och djupare analysmetoder skulle behövas för en kartläggning av författarens attityd. / Discourse prosody and semantic preference are inherent aspects of language. As soon as a word becomes part of text, it seizes to exist as an isolated unit. The aim of this thesis was to study quantitatively the use of the lemmas woman and man, and the compound nouns containing them, in the works of August Strindberg. The material used consists of his novels The Red Room, Gothic Rooms and Black Banners. The occurrence of the two lemmas was observed with respect to frequency, the degree of emotional weight in compounds and the distribution of lexicalized compounds between women and men. Additionally, the context of lemmas was observed diachronically, through an analysis of discourse prosody and semantic preference of the collocations for woman and man. The results showed that the lemma man is mentioned more often than woman. Most compounds for man are lexicalized, while the opposite pertains to women. Compounds containing woman are more often negatively charged. Meanwhile, compounds containing man are predominantly neutral. The analysis of collocations for the lemmas was not able to map the author’s attitude accurately and more data and deeper methods of analysis are needed.

It has been suggested that the semantics of some metaphoricalmotion constructions is related to the deixis of the verbs involved. In accordance with the directions of movement, metaphorical go is said to be associated with deterioration ( go rotten etc.) and metaphorical come – with improvement ( come true etc (cf. Quirk et al. 1985: 1174). The paper at hand aims at empirically testing this assumption from a usage-based construction grammar perspective. It analyses metaphorical-motion constructions from the BNC whose verb-slot is filled by the motion verbs go , come and run followed by an adjective, using the methods of collostruction analysis (cf. Gries and Stefanowitsch 2004a). On the basis of the quantitative analyses carried out, the semantic preferences of the three verbs are determined, compared and related to the deictic aspects involved in the verb meanings. The verb run was selected as a ‘control verb’, since it does not exhibit any deictic aspect of meaning. All three verb constructions are found to exhibit semantic preferences, and, since deixis is absent in run , other aspects are discussed which may motivate such associations. Finally, the results of the data analyses are inspected for what they can say about the emergence of semantic prosodies ‘colouring’ the verbs in the respective constructions.