From Insanely Jealous to Insanely Delicious: Computational Models for the Semantic Bleaching of English Intensifiers

We introduce novel computational models for modeling semantic bleaching, a widespread category of change in which words become more abstract or lose elements of meaning, like the development of {``}arrive{''} from its earlier meaning {`}become at shore.{'} We validate our methods on a widespread case of bleaching in English: de-adjectival adverbs that originate as manner adverbs (as in {``}awfully behaved{''}) and later become intensifying adverbs (as in {``}awfully nice{''}). Our methods formally quantify three reflexes of bleaching: decreasing similarity to the source meaning (e.g., {``}awful{''}), increasing similarity to a fully bleached prototype (e.g., {``}very{''}), and increasing productivity (e.g., the breadth of adjectives that an adverb modifies). We also test a new causal model and find evidence that bleaching is initially triggered in contexts such as {``}conspicuously evident{''} and {``}insanely jealous{''}, where an adverb premodifies a semantically similar adjective. These contexts provide a form of {``}bridging context{''} (Evans and Wilkins, 2000) that allow a manner adverb to be reinterpreted as an intensifying adverb similar to {``}very{''}.