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Pragmatic characteristics of diminutive adjectives in Kazakh and English languages

  • Nagima Manasbayeva ORCID logo EMAIL logo and Leilya Sabitova
Published/Copyright: February 4, 2025

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the functional-pragmatic and communicative-pragmatic use of morphological and syntactic diminutive resources of Kazakh and English in the example of artistic contexts. The following methods were used: comparative-comparative, morphological-syntactic, communicative-pragmatic, analytical-synthetic, and contextual. This paper analysed the main morphological and syntactic resources used for word formation of diminutive adjectives in Kazakh and English languages. In particular, the results of the study showed that synthetic means (use of suffixal morphemes with diminutive semantics) and analytical means (use of special lexemes with diminutive semantics) are frequent in Kazakh. It was determined that suffixal morphemes to express the diminutiveness of adjectives were most often used to warn addressees about the properties of objects and phenomena, to soften categorical evaluation in Kazakh, to diminish the attributes of the object, to demonstrate the incompleteness of the attribute in English. This work can be used in the spheres of communicative linguistics, linguistic pragmatics, word formation, and morphology.


Corresponding author: Nagima Manasbayeva, Department of Foreign Philology, A. Baitursynov Kostanay Regional University, 110000, 47 Baitursynov Str., Kostanay, Republic of Kazakhstan, E-mail:

  1. Conflicts of interest: The authors confirm, that they have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

  2. Data availability: The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author.

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Received: 2024-08-15
Accepted: 2025-01-11
Published Online: 2025-02-04
Published in Print: 2025-05-26

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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