Reduplication OR pure diminutives

[Hannu Tommola]

Dear Michael,

though I hesitate to accept _chashka_ 'cup' as a lexical diminutive,  
cf. _chasha_ 'bowl', nor _kon'jak'_ ('cognac') - as different from  
_kon'jëk_ 'a small horse'.

Best
Hannu

Quoting Michael Rießler <m.riessler at gmail.com>:

> Dear Hannu,
>
> yes. However, you should note that the derivations _chashe-chka_ and  
>  _kon'ja-chok_ cannot be compared to _stol-ik_ because  
> morphologically they are "diminutives of diminutives" (formally  
> marked by a chain of two suffixes). Perhaps the "complimentary  
> diminutive" meaning in Russian is regularly marked by different  
> morphology than the "pure diminutive".
>
> See also a short section on the different diminutives in Russian and  
> Kildin Saami which I wrote in a chapter on contact-induced language  
> change (below the reference in Bibtex).
>
> Best,
> Michael Rießler
>
>
> @incollection{riesler2007a,
> 	Author = {Rie{\ss}ler, Michael},
> 	Booktitle = {Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective},
> 	Crossref = {matras-etal2007a},
> 	Keywords = {Saamic linguistics,Kola Saami,contact  
> linguistics,Phonology;Morphology;Syntax;Verb;Noun;Adjective;Derivation},
> 	Pages = {229-244},
> 	Shortseries = {EALT},
> 	Title = {Kildin {S}aami},
> 	Xref = {matras-etal2007a}}
>
> @collection{matras-etal2007a,
> 	Editor = {Matras, Yaron AND Sakel, Jeanette},
> 	Location = {Berlin},
> 	Number = {38},
> 	Publisher = {Mouton de Gruyter},
> 	Series = {Empirical Approaches to Language Typology},
> 	Shortseries = {EALT},
> 	Title = {Grammatical borrowing in cross-linguistic perspective},
> 	Year = {2007}}
>
> On Mar 4, 2013, at 4:38 PM, Hannu Tommola wrote:
>
>> Dear Francesca and all,
>>
>>> However, as Östen's example suggests, it happens that the use of a  
>>> diminutive marker gets restricted to the encoding of size  
>>> variation only.
>>
>> I am afraid Östen didn't want to say that the diminutive _marker_  
>> in Russian is restricted to refer only to size. He said "in Russian  
>> there are diminutives that seem fairly free of evaluative or  
>> expressive meaning", and his example _stol-ik_ 'small table' does  
>> not prove that the marker with other words refers to size.
>>
>> Russ. _chashe-chka kofe/chaja/u_ doesn't necessarily refer to a  
>> small cup but simply to 'a nice cup of coffee/tea'; an even more  
>> clear example without any hint to small size is _kon'ja-chok_  
>> 'cognac' or any other uncountable noun.
>>
>> Best,
>> Hannu
>>
>> Quoting Francesca Di Garbo <francescadigarbo at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> Dear Scott and dear All,
>>>
>>> As far as we now, the most common source of diminutive affixes  
>>> crosslinguistically is the noun for "child" (Jurafsky 1996). This  
>>> usually starts being used as a sort of classificatory noun to  
>>> refer to the young age of animate entities and gets gradually  
>>> extended to inanimate nouns where it marks small size with  
>>> countable nouns and small quantity with uncountable.  
>>> Interestingly, there is no evidence for affixal diminutives to  
>>> derive from modifiers meaning "small'. On the other hand, the  
>>> diachronic development of diminutive reduplication is very  
>>> difficult to pin down, considering its intertwinment with other  
>>> grammatical functions (plurality, distributivity, attenuation  
>>> etc.). It would be interesting to investigate if the notion of  
>>> /fragmentation /used by Alex to make sense of the polysemy of  
>>> reduplication in Mwotlap is also applicable on the diachronic  
>>> level. Also, it would be interesting to see how common  
>>> reduplicative patterns for diminutive marking are across other  
>>> Creoles (which I don't have any clue about).
>>>
>>> As for the second point under discussion (whether on not  
>>> diminutives can express only size):
>>> Synchronically, diminutives express evaluation of quantity (SMALL)  
>>> and quality (BAD or GOOD) and, as Paul points out, the two  
>>> components are not easy to tell apart when analysing the semantics  
>>> of a diminutive affix. However, as Östen's example suggests, it  
>>> happens that the use of a diminutive marker gets restricted to the  
>>> encoding of size variation only. I have the impression that this  
>>> is very likely to happen in languages with several different  
>>> diminutive (and possibly augmentative) affixes, where the  
>>> different markers show different distributional properties in  
>>> terms of the meanings encoded. The Bantu languages are an  
>>> excellent illustration in this respect as the examples from Yeyi  
>>> show. Bantu languages (and other Niger-Congo languages with rich  
>>> noun class systems as the Atlantic languages) often have several  
>>> noun classes which are used to encode evaluative (diminutive and  
>>> augmentative) meanings. Interestingly, besides the range of uses  
>>> pointed out by Frank with respect to Yeyi, different diminutive  
>>> classes in one language may specialize in the encoding of  
>>> different size nuances (small vs. tiny) as in the example below  
>>> from Lega, where class 12 expresses small size and class 19 tiny  
>>> size:
>> --
>> Hannu Tommola
>> Professor emer. of Russian Language (Translation Theory and Practice)
>> School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies
>> FIN-33014 University of Tampere, Finland
>
>
>



-- 
Hannu Tommola
Professor emer. of Russian Language (Translation Theory and Practice)
School of Language, Translation and Literary Studies
FIN-33014 University of Tampere, Finland