Pejorative vs. Diminutive

[David Costa]

All I can contribute to this is that while Miami-Illinois and Shawnee of course have diminutives, there is no pejorative in either language. Apparently, however, Potawatomi has both. (See Charles Hockett, 1948, Potawatomi II: Derivation, Personal Prefixes, and Nouns. IJAL 14, especially pages 70-1.)

Dave Costa


> Greetings.  I'm working on a paper concerning diminutives and pejoratives - and in particular comparing Plains Cree (which lacks a distinct pejorative) and Saulteaux (which has one).  This has me wondering about the distribution of these forms across the Algonquian family.  I'm hoping some of you can comment on the distribution of diminutives versus pejoratives in as many Algonquian languages as possible.  In particular, how widespread are diminutive and pejorative forms?  Is the pejorative restricted just to Ojibwe or do other language have distinct pejoratives?  Thank you for any information you can share.



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/algonquiana/attachments/20130507/5b9a008f/attachment.htm>