Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216208%3A11320%2F25%3AJA6VZH8J" target="_blank" >RIV/00216208:11320/25:JA6VZH8J - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792874-014/pdf?licenseType=restricted" target="_blank" >https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110792874-014/pdf?licenseType=restricted</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110792874-014" target="_blank" >10.1515/9783110792874-014</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives

Original language description

This paper examines the impact of the typological property of morphological richness on diminutive formation in Italian, Austrian German, English, and Tunisian Arabic. It investigates the priority of the pragmatics over the semantics of diminutives in these languages, i.e., of pragmatic meanings such as mitigation, endearment, sympathy, empathy, and irony over smallness and youth. Hypocoristics and quasi-hypocoristics are also dealt with. Diminutive formation in Arabic is root-based, in English word-based, in German and Italian it is both. Morphological richness has an impact on high type/token frequencies (Italian > Arabic > or ≈ German > English), number of productive diminutive patterns, number of different patterns applying to the same base (if pragmatic, no pattern or lexical blocking, e.g., Italian vipp-ino/-etto/-uccio/-ar-ello), combinations of diminutive suffixes. Italian is the freest language in attributing to diminutives both the head and the non-head property of changing (or not) the gender, and of transforming (or not) adjectives into nouns. English and German turn adjectives into nouns, German also changes gender into neuter, with the exception of (quasi-)hypocoristics and of child-/pet-centered speech. The data analyzed are from Viennese German, Tunisian Arabic, Tuscan Italian, and British English. Our focus is on diminutives in asymmetric communication with pet animals.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

C - Chapter in a specialist book

CEP classification

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OECD FORD branch

10201 - Computer sciences, information science, bioinformathics (hardware development to be 2.2, social aspect to be 5.8)

Project

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Continuities

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Publication year

2023

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Book/collection name

Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains

ISBN

978-3-11-079287-4

Number of pages of the result

28

Pages from-to

335-362

Number of pages of the book

596

Publisher name

De Gruyter Mouton

Place of publication

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UT code for WoS chapter

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