augmentative/diminutive shifting

[Jess Tauber]

It remains to be seen how widespread this type of shift is in the world
outside of the Americas. Some of the "Paleosiberian" languages have a two
member shift.  In most
of Eurasia there is/was rampant use of ideophones, and in some of the
languages of the region (mostly on the Pacific Coast) there is often pretty
obvious aug/dim splitting (though unlike Siouan), but I'll bet it was rare to
find this on established lexical items as normally thought of. I've got data
from Mongolian, Manchu, Korean, Japanese, Turkish, etc. representing
"Altaic", languages from Munda and Dravidian families, various Mon-Khmer,
etc.  I haven't yet sorted the data yet from several dozen South American
(and about a dozen Mesoamerican) languages, but there didn't seem to be much
in the way of shifting.  Johanna Nichols (p.c.) has said that aug/dim s.s.
seems to be a Pacific Rim phenomenon, and for the most part she may be right,
as far as I can see.

Jess Tauber
zylogy at aol.com