Article published in:
Languages in Contrast
Vol. 18:2 (2018) ► pp. 283–306

A comparison of diminutive expressions in English and Slovene as exemplified by Roald Dahl’s Matilda

| University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

The article presents and compares ways of expressing diminution in English and Slovene nouns, verbs and adjectives with the aim of testing a hypothesis suggesting that Slovene uses diminutive forms more frequently than English. Depending on language typology, diminutiveness can be realized predominantly word-formationally or predominantly analytically. The hypothesis is tested against an analysis of diminutive forms used in Dahl’s Matilda and its Slovene translation, showing that Slovene indeed prefers to use diminutives more frequently than English. A tendency can be established for Slovene to form diminutives by word-formational means in the categories of noun and verb. In verbs, English tends towards neutrality of expression. Frequent use of multiple diminutiveness and the ability of analytic and synthetic diminutive forms to be freely interchangeable in Slovene testify to the strong presence of diminutive forms in the language system.

Keywords: evaluative morphology, diminutive, contrastive analysis, English / Slovene
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Patterns of expressing diminutiveness in Slovene and English compared
    • 2.1Diminutiveness in Slovene nouns
    • 2.2Diminutiveness in English nouns
    • 2.3Diminutiveness in Slovene verbs
    • 2.4Diminutiveness in English verbs
    • 2.5Diminutiveness in Slovene adjectives
    • 2.6Diminutiveness in English adjectives
  • 3.The corpus of Matilda – a quantitative analysis of English and Slovene diminutive expressions
    • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.2Diminutive nouns and their translation patterns
    • 3.3Diminutive verbs and their translation patterns
    • 3.4Diminutive adjectives and their translation patterns
  • 4.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgement
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 28 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.15016.sic
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