Hi: I've found in a textbook the following explanation, "a bit too" is followed by a positive adjective, example: "She's a bit too nice, if you know what I mean." And my question for you is - why should it be followed by a positive adjective? Isn't this explanation arbitrary? Can't I say, for instance, "I've got a friend who's a bit too ironic?" Thanks!
When people use "a bit too" + positive adjective, they usually mean
the opposite.
"She's a bit too nice" = "She's not really nice but she pretends to be nice"
When you use it with a negative, would you mean the opposite?
"He's a bit too stupid" -- would this mean that he's really smart? It could, but usually it doesn't. When people say something like that they just mean that he's
really stupid. Just scanning the first few pages of the Google results you mentioned, it's obvious that people are using this construction with
the negative adjectives simply
as an intensifier. This is
not how this construction works with
a positive adjective.
Your example with "ironic" similarly doesn't really work to mean the opposite. "He's a bit too ironic" -- does this mean he's not ironic at all? That would be absurd. To be too ironic, he has to
be ironic. What this would mean then is simply that he's really ironic; he's being ironic
too much.
While with a positive adjective this can be sarcastic, it's not sarcastic at all with a negative one.