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- Title
The rise and fall of Mojeño diminutives through the centuries.
- Authors
Rose, Françoise
- Abstract
This paper investigates the diachrony of diminutives in Mojeño across four centuries. First, it shows that the three Mojeño diminutives have two lexical sources: ‘child’ and ‘seed’. This constitutes a counterexample to <xref>Jurafsky’s (1996)</xref> theory concerning the universal source of diminutives. Second, the paper investigates the grammaticalization process of diminutives and their further distributional and functional changes. It shows that the extension of the distribution onto verbs and grammatical parts of speech correlates with the gain of emotional connotations. It describes the evolution of emotional connotations of the diminutives and the pragmaticalization of their interactional functions until the eventual shift to purely expressive morphemes when diminutives lose their core meaning of ‘smallness’. Third, since each of the three language varieties has one ‘true’ diminutive only, two successive cycles of diminutive renewal are hypothesized, whereby an old diminutive is replaced by a new one.
- Subjects
MOJO (South American people); DIMINUTIVES (Grammar); LEXICAL grammar; PRAGMATICS; SEMANTICS
- Publication
Studies in Language, 2018, Vol 42, Issue 1, p146
- ISSN
0378-4177
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1075/sl.00006.ros