THE PROBLEM OF DEINTENSIFICATION OF EXTREME EVALUATION

Abstract

The article examines the functional and semantic category of extreme evaluation whose inherent features are quantitative certainty, ungradability, non-dynamism, expressiveness, focusing on the problem of occasional gradation and deintensification, which aren’t typical of the category use. The paper presents results of the structural, semantic and pragmatic analysis of examples found in the research corpus wherein the extreme degree of evaluation is lowered. The concepts of approximation, approximate evaluation and negative predication in extreme evaluative statements are considered and the common purposes of their use are revealed. The author generalizes the findings in terms of the language forms and methods applied by the speakers in their evaluative statements to eliminate the seme of extreme degree of evaluation contained in the lexis used.