Abstract :
This paper examines the various strategies used to mark intensification in Camfranglais, a composite language developed by French-speaking Cameroonian secondary and high school students. The data for the study were collected through participant observation, questionnaires, and from the corpora gathered by Kouega (2003) and Ntobe, Biloa and Echu (2008). After analyzing the data using structural grammar (Quirk and Greenbaum 1973ʹs model) as the theoretical framework, it is found that intensifiers in Camfranglais, from the stand point of discourse, can be classified into four main groups: (a) single-word intensifiers, (b) reduplicative intensifiers, (c) phrasal intensifiers, and (d) sentential intensifiers. Each of these modify specific items in the sentence. Single-word intensifiers, which are found to belong to the word classes of determiners, adjectives, verbs and adverbs can act either as premodifiers (when the modified elements are nouns) or as postmodifiers (in case the modified elements are adjectives and verbs) while reduplicative intensifiers, which are grouped into two categories, can function either as noun phrase modifiers and subject/object complement, on the one hand, and adjunct on the other hand. Phrasal intensifiers, like reduplicative ones have been grouped into two categories: the first consisting of intensifiers which function as adjective and verb modifiers while the second group includes those which function as noun modifiers. The range of modification of sentential intensifiers is found to be limited to adjectives and verbs. With regard to the semantics of these intensifiers, the findings reveal that they are almost all sense-oriented, the majority of them being amplifiers, and can be classified under the following spheres: visual, tactile, mental, gustatory and spacio-temporal.
