With the exception of adjectival intensifiers used to modify (pseudo-)participles and deverbal adjectives like those given in (72), which are more extensively discussed in Section 9.5, there are very few adjectival downtoners; cf. Section 3.1.2, sub II.

This section will therefore be mainly concerned with adjectives like waanzinnig and ernstig in (73), which function as amplifiers. Section 3.1.2, sub I, has shown that adjectival amplifiers fall into two separate classes. First, adjectival amplifiers of the type waanzinnig in (73a) just have an amplifying effect; the original meaning of the adjective “insane" has disappeared: (73a) simply expresses that the book is very good. Adjectival amplifiers of the type ernstig in (73b), on the other hand, have more or less retained their original meaning “serious": (73b) expresses not only that Jan is very ill, but also that the illness is serious. In other words, an adjectival adverb can occasionally act as a second order predicate, denoting a property that is predicated not of entities but of the properties of entities (such as those denoted by set-denoting adjectives).

In view of the preceding, it is not surprising that we also encounter adjectival adverbs like lekker'appetizingly', aandoenlijk'movingly' and mooi'beautifully' in (74), whose primary semantic contributions are not intensification but second order predication. See Section 6.7 for a discussion of predicatively used adjectives that seem to have a similar second order property.

Finally, it can be observed that evaluative adjectives like verdomd 'damned' , deksels 'confounded' , verrekt 'damned' can be used adverbially. In this use, these adjectives generally have an amplifying effect. See Section 3.1.2, sub IB, for more extensive discussion.