Intensification in written L2 Italian. Insights from the multilingual region of South Tyrol

The present study compares the use of adjective intensification in written L2 Italian production in South Tyrolean upper secondary schools with that of young Italian native speakers. By relying on a Diasystematic Construction Grammar approach, it explores the role of learners’ L1s, L2 proficiency levels and their linguistic environments as potential variables affecting the use and choice of different intensifying constructions. Results show that a dominant German-speaking linguistic environment is a significant predictor of learners’ preferences for a syntactic over a morphological intensification type. Unexpectedly, however, learners of Italian also make heavy use of the intensifying suffix — issimo, an unfamiliar construction in German. Results also show a difference in the diversity of intensification types used by learners compared to native speakers. Learners are limited to the most frequent types and make a very limited use of maximizers, which seem to be a “blind spot”.