Chapter published in:
Extravagant Morphology: Studies in rule-bending, pattern-extending and theory-challenging morphology
Edited by Matthias Eitelmann and Dagmar Haumann
[Studies in Language Companion Series 223] 2022
► pp. 101–130

The extravagant dutch suffix -ke and its meandering through the interfaces

| Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg
The substandard Dutch diminutive suffix -ke occurs in words of four different categories: nouns, predicatively used adjectives, adverbs, and interjections. In nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, the suffix may trigger an epenthetic consonant, which is not available for the interjections. This seems to go hand in hand with a syntactic distinction: for the interjections the suffix is not to be analysed as a diminutive, but as an honorific. I argue that in all contexts, the suffix realises scalar features, but of different natures. The phonological contrasts follow from the extravagant meandering through the syntax-phonology interface.
Keywords: syntax-phonology interface, honorifics, diminutives, epenthetic consonants, Distributed Morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Distributed morphology
  • 3.The epenthetic consonant
  • 4.The [s] is a syntactic epenthetic consonant typologically
  • 5.Same syntax, different lexical items
  • 6.Same lexical item, different syntax
    • 6.1The suffix -ke may occur as an honorific
    • 6.2The honorific and the diminutive are realised by the same lexical item
    • 6.3Restrictions on productivity
  • 7.The path through the interfaces
    • 7.1The features realised by -ke/-tje
    • 7.2The insertion of the epenthetic consonant
    • 7.3A remaining puzzle
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 16 March 2022
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.223.05deb
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