[Lingtyp] query: verbal diminutives

[Dmitry Nikolaev]

A minor correction.

> Some examples include: German *hüsteln *(‘to cough lightly’), Italian
*dormicchiare *(‘to doze’), Croatian *grickati *(‘to nibble’), Czech *tr*
*̌epotat *(‘to flutter’), Slovene *igri**čkati* (‘to play around’), Russian
*xaxan’kat *(‘to giggle’)...

This is not standard Russian. I do not know this word, and the only example
I found in the corpus is from a novel depicting the speech of some highly
divergent northern dialect. The usual Russian verb for this meaning is
*xixikat**’.*

On Fri, 14 Dec 2018 at 14:34, Lier, Eva van <E.H.vanLier at uva.nl> wrote:

> Dear colleagues,
>
>
>
> We are looking for examples and literature on verbal diminutives in and
> across languages.
>
>
>
> Currently, we have some information on verbal diminutives in various
> languages. Some examples include: German *hüsteln *(‘to cough lightly’),
> Italian *dormicchiare *(‘to doze’), Croatian *grickati *(‘to nibble’),
> Czech *tr**̌epotat *(‘to flutter’), Slovene *igri**čkati* (‘to play
> around’), Russian *xaxan’kat *(‘to giggle’), Finnish *luk-ais-e *(‘skim
> through (a text)’ < *luk- *‘read’), San’ani Arabic * tSaynai *(‘to
> pretend not to hear’ < *Saanaj *‘to not hear’), Hebrew *kifcec *(‘to jump
> around < *kafac *‘to jump’), Passamaquoddy *ə̆p**ə-ss-**ìn *(sit-
> dim-animate.intransitive.2 < ‘sit down, little one!’), Huave *jujyuij *(‘to
> shake gently’), and Lardil *laala* (‘to jab lightly’ < *latha* ‘to
> spear’).
>
>
>
> These examples show that the morphological patterns that we subsume under
> “verbal diminutives” fulfill a number of semantic functions, such as
> iterative/frequentative/durative, low intensity, distributivity, and
> attenuation. These functions may extend (pragmatically) to playfulness,
> tentativeness, pretense/irrealis/fictiveness, trivialization, aimlessness,
> affection/intimacy, and contempt/pejorativeness. In some cases (see
> Passamaquoddy above), verbal diminutive marking implies that an event
> participant is a child or an otherwise small entity.
>
>
>
> Also, verbal diminutives can be expressed by various morphological means,
> including affixation, reduplication, and non-concatenative morphology. In
> some cases, the verbal diminutive markers are related to nominal
> diminutives; in other cases, they seem to have different origins, such as
> spatial markers. The productivity of verbal diminutive formation apparently
> differs between languages.
>
>
>
> We would be grateful for any references and/or examples of verbal
> diminutives in the language(s) of your expertise, including their
> semantics/pragmatics, formation, (diachronic) origin, productivity and
> usage frequency.
>
>
>
> We will post a summary.
>
>
>
> Many thanks in advance!
>
>
>
> Eva van Lier, Jenny Audring, Sterre Leufkens
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Eva van Lier, PhD
>
> Department of Linguistics
> University of Amsterdam
>
>
>
> www.uva.nl/profiel/e.h.vanlier
>
>
>
> P.C.Hoofthuis, kamer 6.45
> Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>
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