EMPH Emphatics
Definition
General emphatic markers: just, really, so + adjective, do + verb (emphatic do), etc.
Detection Rules
Default emphatics rule (based on MFTE): context-dependent patterns. Refines RB for tag refinement architecture.
cql[word="most" & pos="DT"]
cql[word="most"] [pos="JJ.*|VBN|VBG"]
cql[word="real|dead|damn|super"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="really|truly|bloody|pretty|more"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*|VB.*|MD"]
cql[word="so"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="far|way" & pos!="NN.*"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="such"] [word="a|an"]
cql[word="[Dd]o|[Dd]oes|[Dd]id" & pos="VB.*"] [pos="VB"]
combine: p1 | p2 | p3 | p4 | p5 | p6 | p7 | p8
pybiber
pybiber’s emphatic patterns: simple words (no POS filter), so/real + adjective, multi-word expressions, emphatic do + verb.
cql[word="just|really|most|more"]
cql[word="so"] [pos="JJ.*"]
cql[word="real"] [pos="JJ.*"]
cql[word="such"] [word="a"]
cql[word="a"] [word="lot"]
cql[word="for"] [word="sure"]
cql[word="do|does|did|doing" & pos="VB.*"] [pos="VB.*"]
combine: p1 | p2 | p3 | p4 | p5 | p6 | p7
mfte
MFTE emphatics: all context-dependent. Most/dead/damn/real/super before adjective or adverb. Really/truly/bloody/pretty/more before adj/adv/verb. So before adjective. Far/way before adj/adv (not “so/thus far”, not “away”). Such before a/an. Emphatic do counted separately via DOAUX tag.
cql[word="most" & pos="DT"]
cql[word="most"] [pos="JJ.*|VBN|VBG"]
cql[word="real|dead|damn|super"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="really|truly|bloody|pretty|more"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*|VB.*|MD"]
cql[word="so"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="far|way" & pos!="NN.*"] [pos="JJ.*|RB.*"]
cql[word="such"] [word="a|an"]
cql[word="[Dd]o|[Dd]oes|[Dd]id" & pos="VB.*"] [pos="VB"]
combine: p1 | p2 | p3 | p4 | p5 | p6 | p7 | p8
Normalization
Per words
Examples
I do wish I hadn’t drunk quite so much.
Source: le_foll_2024
Oh really?
Source: le_foll_2024
I just can’t get my head around it.
Source: le_foll_2024
Sources
- biber_1988 — Biber, Douglas (1988) : Variation across Speech and Writing
- mfte — Le Foll, Elen & Shakir, Muhammad (2023/2025) : Multi-Feature Tagger of English (MFTE) — Python version
- pybiber — Brown, David West & Reinhart, Alex (2026) : pybiber — Python package for linguistic feature extraction and Multi-Dimensional Analysis
- grieve_2023 — Grieve, Jack (2023) : Register variation explains stylometric authorship analysis
- bohmann_2019 — Bohmann, Axel (2019) : Variation in English Worldwide: Varieties and Genres in a Quantitative Perspective