[Lingtyp] query: verbal diminutives

[David Inman]

There are three ways of forming verbal diminutives in Nuuchahnulth (nuk),
depending somewhat on dialect: the suffix -ck̓in, of unknown origin, and
the suffix -t̓ana, which is mostly used in the northern dialects and is
transparently derived from the word for child t̓an̓a. The meanings are
identical as far as I know, with one form being swapped for the other as
you go dialect to dialect.

The diminutive can refer to doing something a little bit:
haʔuk - 'eat'
haʔukck̓in - 'eat a little bit'

mataa - 'fly'
mataat̓ana - 'fly a little bit' (above something)

It can also refer to doing something for a small amount of time:
šiiƛuk - 'move house'
šiiƛukck̓in - 'move for a little while'

And it can refer to extent:
hayumḥi - 'not know/forget'
hayumḥit̓ana - 'forget a little bit/not remember fully'

kʷiisḥin - 'be different'
kʷiisḥint̓ana - 'be a little different'


As is somewhat typical for Nuuchahnulth, these are not verbal-only
suffixes. I think(?) they go on all predicates, which includes nouns and
adjectives, and possibly adverbs though that appears less productive:
Adj: ʔiiḥ - 'big'
ʔiiḥck̓in - ’a little big’
ʔiiḥt̓ana - 'a little big'

Adj: wiwišʕaqƛ - 'unmotivated'
wiwišʕaqƛck̓in - 'a little unmotivated'

Noun: t̓an̓eʔis - ‘small child’
t̓an̓eʔisck̓in - ‘really young child’
(NB: t̓an̓eʔis is t̓an̓a 'child' + nominal diminutive =ʔis but must now be
relexicalized as a single word as there is a following suffix)

Adv: ƛaḥ - 'now'
ƛaḥck̓in - 'recent past'

David Inman
PhD Candidate
University of Washington Linguistics


On Fri, Dec 14, 2018 at 7:39 PM Maia Ponsonnet <maia.ponsonnet at uwa.edu.au>
wrote:

> Dear Eva,
>
>
> Marine Vuillermet and I have just edited a special issue of *Studies in
> Language *on "Morphology and emotions across the world's languages"
> (42:1, 2018), and there's a fair bit in there on verbal diminutives.
>
>
> Here are links to the table of contents and to the intro
>
> https://benjamins.com/catalog/sl.42.1
>
> <https://benjamins.com/catalog/sl.42.1>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SFwHidharB2DC6fWNhOyeuWsp-x_v06Q/view?usp=sharing
>
>
> You will find discussions of verbal diminutives in Nemeth & Sores's paper
> but also in practically all the papers that deal with diminutives
> (eg Guillaume p. 122-123, Rose, Taine-Cheikh, Vanhove; see intro).
>
>
> Here's also a link to the typology of emotional values of diminutives and
> augmentatives (first article in the issue):
>
>
> https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zbMY9i7wkg5oyY_CBQjxZSSmlmIlChgl/view?usp=sharing
>
>
> Finally, you can find discussions of verbal diminutives in Dalabon
> (Gunwinyguan, non-Pama-nyungan, Australia) in:
>
> Ponsonnet, Maïa and Nicholas Evans. 2015. Dalabon, *in* Grandi N. and
> Kortvelyessy L. *eds.*, *The Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology*,
> 401-407. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
>
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1NfWSLfn1gFcWl4ZEdEcVc3N0E
>
> With a more detailed version in Chapter 4 (p. 81ff) of
>
> Ponsonnet, Maïa. 2014. *The language of emotions: The case of Dalabon
> (Australia)*. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Collection Cognitive Linguistic
> Studies in Cultural Contexts. 466 p.
> https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B1NfWSLfn1gFZFNMMTJ0TTZtUEE
>
>
> I'm happy to send more PDFs etc. if needed.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Maïa
>
>
> Dr Maïa Ponsonnet
> Senior Lecturer in Linguistics
> ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Fellow
>
>
> Social Sciences Building, Room 2.36
> Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education
> The University of Western Australia
> 35 Stirling Hwy, Perth, WA (6009), Australia
> P.  +61 (0) 8 6488 2870 - M.  +61 (0) 468 571 030
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Lingtyp <lingtyp-bounces at listserv.linguistlist.org> on behalf of
> Lier, Eva van <E.H.vanLier at uva.nl>
> *Sent:* Friday, 14 December 2018 8:34 PM
> *To:* lingtyp at listserv.linguistlist.org
> *Subject:* [Lingtyp] query: verbal diminutives
>
>
> 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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