Morphological and syntactic adjective intensification in L2 Italian and German in a multilingual context

Abstract We present a comparative study in which we analyse the use of the intensified adjective construction by young learners of Italian and German from the multilingual region of South Tyrol (Italy). Italian and German share a range of intensifying constructions, relying both on morphological (e.g., the intensifying prefix construction It. strapieno , Ger. supervoll ‘very full’) and syntactic resources (e.g., the prototypical adverb + adjective construction It. molto pieno , Ger. sehr voll ‘very full’). However, they also rely on language-specific means, such as the Italian superlative suffix – issimo ( pienissimo ‘very full’) and the German intensifying compound construction ( knallvoll ‘very full’). By adopting a Diasystematic Construction Grammar and a usage-based approach, we investigate the ways in which different morphological devices interact and compete with each other and with syntactic intensification devices in L2 Italian and German. Results show that the frequencies of the intensified adjectives and learners’ proficiencies are the main predictors for the use of a morphological intensification type in both L2 Italian and German. However, morphological intensification is only occasionally used in L2 German, while L2 Italian learners commonly rely on the superlative construction in –issimo , competing with the prototypical syntactic construction.