Milli mála - 2021, Síða 174
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ence is not clear.14 In this study, gersamlega is mainly examined in
the corpora, but gjörsamlega is also mentioned in a later section.
In its definition of gersamlega, the ÍEO gives “completely, per-
fectly” as its English counterparts. The ÍNO gives “alveg, algerle-
ga,” and similarly, Íslenskt orðanet defines gersamlega under the con-
cept of FULLKOMNUN ‘perfection’. In all of these dictionaries, the
adverb is essentially defined in the same way. The following are the
examples of gersamlega from the ÍNO (3a, b):
(3) a. Áætlun mín misheppnaðist gersamlega.
plan my failed completely
‘My plan failed completely.’
b. Hann er gersamlega áhyggjulaus þrátt fyrir slæman fjárhag.
he is completely inconcerned in-spite-of bad finances
‘He is completely unconcerned in spite of his bad finances.’
From these definitions and examples (3a, b), it is possible to gain a
general understanding of the usage of gersamlega. However, alveg
and algerlega appear in the ÍNO’s definition of gersamlega, and they
are also handled as synonyms in the ÍSO. As there is no further
explanation, it is not easy to discern whether there is any semantic
difference between gersamlega and alveg/algerlega.
3.2 Corpus Data
To observe the differences between these adverbs more clearly, data
from the RMH seem to be enormously helpful. In the RMH, adjec-
tives were found that directly followed the adverbs gersamlega and
alveg/algerlega (as in example (3b)). In the corpus, there are 265,090
examples for alveg, 34,965 for algerlega, and 4,731 for gersamlega.
Table 2 shows the 15 most frequent adjectives for each word.
14 Íslensk orðabók (Mörður Árnason 2007) gives no entry for the adverb gersamlega/gjörsamlega, (only
for the adjective gersamlegur/gjörsamlegur), but gersamlega appears in the definition of algerlega/
algjörlega.
YUKI MINAMISAWA