Publication details
Česká substantivní deminutiva ve světle korpusových dat
| Title in English | Corpus Data Reflecting Czech Diminutives of Nouns |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2013 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Gramatika & Korpus 2012: 4. mezinárodní konference |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Linguistics |
| Keywords | diminutives; diminutives in Czech; contrastive research; Czech-German |
| Attached files | |
| Description | It has been almost 50 years ago since Miloš Dokulil presented his system of Czech diminutive suffixes. Actually, it was Lubomír Doležel, who wrote the chapter “Diminutive Names” and listed as many as 39 diminutive suffixes (incl. their variants). This number is the highest in the in traditional Czech word-formation literature dating from M. Vavřinec Benedikt Nudožerský (1603) to the latest contemporary Czech grammar. This article revises the system of the Czech diminutive suffixes of nouns: corpus data show there are some suffixes hardly used or even not existing at all in the modern system of Czech noun diminutives. On the other hand the corpus driven approach proved the existence of suffixes that have not been listed in the system so far. These suffixes are either “simple” ones or “blended” from a derivational and diminutive suffix (“compound suffix”). (We use terms “simple” and “compound” suffix instead of “primary”, “secondary” and “tertiary” suffix.) This new system of Czech diminutive suffixes can improve the analysis of formal diminutive pairs and can help to cover up regularities in forming Czech noun diminutives. The first chapter of this article re-defines a diminutive as a one-word-form and outlines diminutives, non-diminutives and the “grey zone” between them. |