Strengthening Strategy Across Languages: A Cognitive and Grammatical Universal Phenomenon

Authors: Behnam Jay

Abstract:

The phenomenon called "Strengthening" in human language refers to the strategic use of multiple linguistic elements to intensify specific grammatical or semantic functions in this study. This study explores cross-linguistic evidence demonstrating how strengthening appears in various grammatical structures. In French and Spanish, double negatives are used not to cancel each other out, but to intensify the negation, challenging the conventional understanding that double negatives result in an affirmation. For example, in French, il ne sait pas (He doesn't know.) uses both "ne" and "pas" to strengthen the negation. Similarly, in Spanish, No vio a nadie. (He didn't see anyone.) uses "no" and "nadie" to achieve a stronger negative meaning. In Japanese, double honorifics, often perceived as erroneous, are reinterpreted as intentional efforts to amplify politeness, as seen in forms like ossharareru (to say, honorific). Typically, an honorific morpheme appears only once in a predicate, but native speakers often use double forms to reinforce politeness. In Turkish, the word eger (indicating a condition) is sometimes used together with the conditional suffix-se(sa) within the same sentence to strengthen the conditional meaning, as in "Eğer yağmur yağarsa, o gelmez" (If it rains, he won't come). Furthermore, the combination of question words with rising intonation in various languages serves to enhance interrogative force. These instances suggest that strengthening is a cross-linguistic strategy that may reflect a broader cognitive mechanism in language processing. This paper investigates these cases in detail, providing insights into why languages may adopt such strategies.

Keywords: strengthening, cross-linguistic analysis, syntax, semantics, cognitive mechanism