augmentative/diminutive shifting

[Reuse Willem J De]

Some comments regarding the sound-symbolic shifts recently discussed.
The mostly diminutive s/sh symbolism is extremely widespread across
languages of the world, and is often productive.  What is harder to
find cross-linguistically, and therefore more interesting from a
comparative point of view, is the three degree symbolism one finds in
Lakota s/sh/x, for example.

In Santiago del Estero Quechua (cf. my 1986 IJAL article), there is a
lot of lexicalized as well as some productive s/sh symbolism (which
exists as well as in other Quechua and other South American languages),
but I only found one case of three degree symbolism, reminiscent of the
Lakota; this was the triplet:

	asna- to smell bad
	ashna- to stink
	axna- to stink really bad

I don't know if any other words, or any other Quechua languages do
this; it would be interesting to survey this sort of three degree
symbolism in the Americas (and indeed across the world).

Willem de Reuse
rwd0002 at unt.edu
Dept. of English
University of North Texas