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Article published In:
Morphology and emotions across the world's languages
Edited by Maïa Ponsonnet and Marine Vuillermet
[Studies in Language 42:1] 2018
► pp. 146–181

The rise and fall of Mojeño diminutives through the centuries

| Laboratoire Dynamique Du Langage, (CNRS & Université de Lyon)
This paper investigates the diachrony of diminutives in Mojeño across four centuries. First, it shows that the three Mojeño diminutives have two lexical sources: ‘child’ and ‘seed’. This constitutes a counterexample to Jurafsky’s (1996) theory concerning the universal source of diminutives. Second, the paper investigates the grammaticalization process of diminutives and their further distributional and functional changes. It shows that the extension of the distribution onto verbs and grammatical parts of speech correlates with the gain of emotional connotations. It describes the evolution of emotional connotations of the diminutives and the pragmaticalization of their interactional functions until the eventual shift to purely expressive morphemes when diminutives lose their core meaning of ‘smallness’. Third, since each of the three language varieties has one ‘true’ diminutive only, two successive cycles of diminutive renewal are hypothesized, whereby an old diminutive is replaced by a new one.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Diminutives in Old Mojeño
  • 3.Diminutives and associated expressive markers in the Mojeño Ignaciano dialect
    • 3.1-chicha
    • 3.2-tsitsa
    • 3.3-sami
  • 4.Diminutives and associated expressive markers in the Mojeño Trinitario dialect
    • 4.1-chicha
    • 4.2-samini
    • 4.3-gira
  • 5.The rise and fall of the diminutives
    • 5.1Inventory of the Mojenõ diminutives over time
    • 5.2The etymology of the diminutives
    • 5.3Distributional change in the diminutives
    • 5.4Functional change in the diminutives
    • 5.5Diachronic summary for each diminutive
    • 5.6Waves of diminutives: renewal cycles
  • 6.Summary of results
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 19 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.00006.ros
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