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10 Challenges in analyzing Polish diminutives

  • Iwona Burkacka
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Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains
This chapter is in the book Diminutives across Languages, Theoretical Frameworks and Linguistic Domains

Abstract

This paper tackles diminutive formations in Polish and contains a review of the rich Polish literature on the topic. The analyzed material comes from the “Słownik gniazd słowotwórczych współczesnego języka ogólnopolskiego” (2001, 2004). In Polish, diminutives are mostly created from nouns by attaching various suffixes. The most common suffix is -k-, which, depending on the grammatical gender of the noun and phonetic factors, takes the forms -k(a), -k(o), -ek, -ik. Some diminutive suffixes may be reduplicated on adjacent derivational steps, e.g., -k(a)+k (a). The addition of suffixes is accompanied by numerous alternations and sometimes even causes deletions of noninflectional parts of stems. There are also semantic restrictions on the formation of diminutives. The text presents diminutives of the first and second degree and the combinability of the diminutive suffixes. The influence of the adopted perspective of description (diachronic or synchronic) and lexicalization processes on the interpretation of diminutives is discussed, too. Attention is drawn to the coupling of the meaning of smallness with positive emotional content and/or the coupling of the meaning of smallness with the meaning of youth (immaturity) in the diminutives of animal nouns. Other semantic and pragmatic properties of diminutives are also pointed out.

Abstract

This paper tackles diminutive formations in Polish and contains a review of the rich Polish literature on the topic. The analyzed material comes from the “Słownik gniazd słowotwórczych współczesnego języka ogólnopolskiego” (2001, 2004). In Polish, diminutives are mostly created from nouns by attaching various suffixes. The most common suffix is -k-, which, depending on the grammatical gender of the noun and phonetic factors, takes the forms -k(a), -k(o), -ek, -ik. Some diminutive suffixes may be reduplicated on adjacent derivational steps, e.g., -k(a)+k (a). The addition of suffixes is accompanied by numerous alternations and sometimes even causes deletions of noninflectional parts of stems. There are also semantic restrictions on the formation of diminutives. The text presents diminutives of the first and second degree and the combinability of the diminutive suffixes. The influence of the adopted perspective of description (diachronic or synchronic) and lexicalization processes on the interpretation of diminutives is discussed, too. Attention is drawn to the coupling of the meaning of smallness with positive emotional content and/or the coupling of the meaning of smallness with the meaning of youth (immaturity) in the diminutives of animal nouns. Other semantic and pragmatic properties of diminutives are also pointed out.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. 1 Introduction: Diminutives across languages, theoretical frameworks and linguistic domains 1
  4. Part I: Theoretical approaches to diminutive formation
  5. 2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language 37
  6. 3 Diminutive or singulative? The suffixes -in and -k in Russian 65
  7. 4 Slavic diminutive morphology: An interplay of scope, templates and paradigms 89
  8. 5 Diminutive formation in Spanish: Evidence for word morphology 115
  9. 6 The syllable as the basis for word formation: Evidence from diminutives, hypocoristics and clippings in English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish and French 131
  10. Part II: Corpus-based and other empirical studies
  11. 7 The Swedish suffix -is and its place within evaluative morphology 153
  12. 8 Diminutives and number: Theoretical predictions and empirical evidence from German in Austria 179
  13. 9 Diminutive verbs in the Austrian language area: Morphological and semantic challenges 205
  14. 10 Challenges in analyzing Polish diminutives 231
  15. 11 Diminutives among other -k(a) words in colloquial Russian: Frequency and suffix variation 253
  16. Part III: Sociolinguistic, pragmatic and acquisitional studies
  17. 12 Borrowed or inspired? Komi diminutive under Russian influence 277
  18. 13 Acquisition of diminutives in Russian and Estonian from a typological perspective 305
  19. 14 Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives 335
  20. 15 Diminutive variation in Austrian Standard German: A corpuslinguistic study 363
  21. 16 Gender discrepancies and evaluative gender shift: A cross-linguistic study within Distributed Morphology 387
  22. Index 415
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110792874-010

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Contents V
  3. 1 Introduction: Diminutives across languages, theoretical frameworks and linguistic domains 1
  4. Part I: Theoretical approaches to diminutive formation
  5. 2 On a low and a high position for diminutive non-manual markers in Italian Sign Language 37
  6. 3 Diminutive or singulative? The suffixes -in and -k in Russian 65
  7. 4 Slavic diminutive morphology: An interplay of scope, templates and paradigms 89
  8. 5 Diminutive formation in Spanish: Evidence for word morphology 115
  9. 6 The syllable as the basis for word formation: Evidence from diminutives, hypocoristics and clippings in English, Dutch, Afrikaans, Swedish and French 131
  10. Part II: Corpus-based and other empirical studies
  11. 7 The Swedish suffix -is and its place within evaluative morphology 153
  12. 8 Diminutives and number: Theoretical predictions and empirical evidence from German in Austria 179
  13. 9 Diminutive verbs in the Austrian language area: Morphological and semantic challenges 205
  14. 10 Challenges in analyzing Polish diminutives 231
  15. 11 Diminutives among other -k(a) words in colloquial Russian: Frequency and suffix variation 253
  16. Part III: Sociolinguistic, pragmatic and acquisitional studies
  17. 12 Borrowed or inspired? Komi diminutive under Russian influence 277
  18. 13 Acquisition of diminutives in Russian and Estonian from a typological perspective 305
  19. 14 Morphological richness and priority of pragmatics over semantics in Italian, Arabic, German and English diminutives 335
  20. 15 Diminutive variation in Austrian Standard German: A corpuslinguistic study 363
  21. 16 Gender discrepancies and evaluative gender shift: A cross-linguistic study within Distributed Morphology 387
  22. Index 415
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