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Article published In:
Linguistics in the Netherlands 2021
Edited by Mark Dingemanse, Eva van Lier and Jorrig Vogels
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 38] 2021
► pp. 128–143

The productivity of Dutch diminutives

 | Utrecht University
 | Utrecht University
This study reports on an investigation of the productivity of the Dutch diminutive paradigm, which gives rise to five suffixal allomorphs, against the background of Yang’s (2016) Tolerance Principle. It shows how, by studying the frequency of the allomorphs and the environments in which they occur, we can use the Tolerance Principle to determine if a productive rule system can be found for the Dutch diminutives. In doing so, we also describe how we collected the necessary data by setting up a corpus study on Dutch diminutives, including a specific one with data from child directed speech.
Keywords: Dutch diminutives, tolerance principle, computational linguistics, acquisition
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dutch diminutives
    • 2.1Empirical background
    • 2.2Theoretical accounts
    • 2.3Acquisition findings
  • 3.Quantifying the relevant diminutive data distribution
    • 3.1The tolerance principle
    • 3.2Corpus research: Determining allomorphs
    • 3.3Corpus research: Feature selection
  • 4.A Tolerance Principle based analysis of Dutch diminutives
    • 4.1Finding a productive rule system
    • 4.2Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 29 October 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.00053.tui
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Cited by (3)

Cited by three other publications

Shi, Rushen & Emeryse Emond
2023. The threshold of rule productivity in infants. Frontiers in Psychology 14 DOI logo
Yang, Charles
2023. A User’s Defense of the Tolerance Principle: Reply to Enger (2022). Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 145:4 ► pp. 563 ff. DOI logo
Yang, Charles
2024. Phonological Regularity and Breakdown. An Account of Vowel Length Leveling in Middle English. In The Method Works, ► pp. 237 ff. DOI logo

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