Colour terms and intensifying constructions in Italian

This investigation proposes a corpus-based description of Italian intensifying constructions including colour terms. Colour terms may be employed as intensification markers in intensifying colour constructions, i.e. ready-made syntactic patterns which specialise in conveying the intensifying value. The chapter aims at identifying and classifying different patterns of Italian intensifying colour constructions according to syntactic/semantic parameters. It is demonstrated that these units can convey different types and degrees of intensified meanings and can be distributed along an intensification cline. Taking into account data gathered from the ITTenTen16 corpus, the analysis identifies the abstract semantic schemata underlying intensifying colour constructions (e.g. the metonymic/metaphoric scale association), and explores the relation between colour terms and schemata, in terms of degrees of lexicalisation/constructionalisation and pattern productivity.