A Contrastive Study of English and Spanish Synthetic Diminutives

A Contrastive Study of English and Spanish Synthetic Diminutives

A contrastive study of English and Spanish synthetic diminutives Anna Theresa Hägg A thesis presented to the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages UNIVERSITY OF OSLO May 2016 II A contrastive study of English and Spanish synthetic diminutives Anna Theresa Hägg UNIVERSITY OF OSLO May 2016 Supervisor: Kristin Bech III © Anna Theresa Hägg 2016 A contrastive study of English and Spanish synthetic diminutives Anna Theresa Hägg http://www.duo.uio.no/ Print: Reprosentralen, University of Oslo IV V For daddy, who shared my enthusiasm for words VI VII Abstract This corpus-based study examines the expression of synthetic diminutives in the often assumed “non-emotive” language of English and the emotive language of Spanish. The topic of diminution is approached through a quantitative perspective, looking at two fundamental concepts of diminution, i.e. productivity of formation and distribution of denotative meanings/semantic denotations. The two corpora used in this study is the Corpus of Historical American English and Corpus del Español, which respectively provide evidence for the manifestations of English and Spanish synthetic diminutives in naturally produced language in the genres of Spoken, Fiction, News, Magazines and Academic texts. The study confirms that synthetic diminutive formation is more productive in Spanish, as is hypothesised, but in addition, it discovers that English shows signs of productiveness when comparing the relative frequencies of individual diminutive lexemes in English and Spanish. Also, this study argues that the diminutive type of specialised diminutives can be found in the English corpus data, a diminutive category which previously has not been acknowledged in English diminutive research, but which already constitutes an important function of the Spanish diminutive expression. Hence, the present study contributes to the lack of empirical research in the understudied field of contrastive word formation. Keywords: English synthetic diminutives, Spanish synthetic diminutives, contrastive word formation, contrastive analysis, corpus-based, Corpus del Español, Corpus of Historical American English VIII IX Acknowledgements In the year I have spent writing my master’s thesis there are a number of people that I would especially like to thank, as I couldn’t have done it without them. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Kristin Bech, who has inspired and helped me, by providing concrete advice for improvement. I will also thank her for initially believing in my suggestion for a topic, for the many hours she has spent reading my work, and, lastly, for sharing of the joy of diminutives with me. I will also thank my fellow students on the eighth floor of Niels Treschow’s Building, who have been a tremendous support morally throughout this year, for being able to discuss and laugh and making the whole prospect of a master’s thesis less daunting. I must, in particular, place a special thanks to Marta, who has helped me with the intricate meanings of Spanish diminutives, as she has lived among locals for a longer period than I have. I would also like to thank my mother for never failing to ask me how my thesis was advancing. X Tables and figures Figure 1.1: The three fields that have given birth to the field of contrastive word- formation.............................................................................................................................. 6 Table 2.1: Diminutive strategies attested across languages .............................................. 11 Table 3.1: Primary search strings applied in the retrieving of English data ..................... 51 Table 3.2: Primary search strings applied in the retrieving of Spanish data .................... 52 Figure 4.1: Build-up of this chapter .................................................................................. 54 Table 4.1: Spanish non-diminutive lexemes ..................................................................... 58 Table 4.2: English non-diminutive lexemes ..................................................................... 59 Table 4.3: Top Ten Frequency Ratings of English and Spanish diminutive lexemes (c.1800–2000) .................................................................................................................... 66 Table 4.4: Spanish Top Ten (1800-2000) from CDE ....................................................... 72 Table 4.5: English Top Ten (1810-2009) from COHA ..................................................... 73 Table 4.6: Semantic classification of Spanish diminutive lexemes ................................. 85 Table 4.7: Semantic classification of English diminutive lexemes .................................. 85 Table 4.8: Examples of diminutive findings from CDE ................................................... 86 Table 4.9: Examples of diminutive findings from COHA ................................................ 87 Table 4.10: Classification of English and Spanish diminutives according to semantic denotation .......................................................................................................................... 88 Table 4.11: Examples of Spanish specialised diminutives from CDE and their corresponding primitive meanings .................................................................................... 89 Table 4.12: Statistical significance scores for the semantic categories of diminutives in English and Spanish ...................................................................................................... 94 Table 4.13: Composition of the two corpora applied in the study .................................... 95 XI Abbreviations Pmw: Per million words AmE: American English SpALL: All dialects of Spanish, peninsular and Southern American TC: tertium comparationis LL: log likelihood RQ: research question Corpora: COHA: The Corpus of Historical American English CDE: Corpus del Español Dictionaries: OED: The Oxford English Dictionary DRAE: Diccionario de la lengua española 1 Table of Contents 1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 4 1.1 Background and aims ................................................................................................ 4 1.2 Contrastive linguistics and practical applications .................................................. 5 1.3 Outline of thesis ......................................................................................................... 6 2 Diminutive theory ...................................................................................................... 8 2.1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 8 2.2 Diminutives in English and Spanish ......................................................................... 8 2.2.1 What are diminutives? ....................................................................................... 9 2.2.2 Nine diminutive strategies ............................................................................... 10 2.2.3 Domains ............................................................................................................. 16 2.2.4 Productivity ....................................................................................................... 19 2.2.5 Grammatical aspects ........................................................................................ 21 2.2.6 Repertoire of diminutive suffixes in English .................................................. 23 2.2.7 Classification of derivational suffixes in Spanish ........................................... 30 2.2.8 Repertoire of diminutive suffixes in Spanish ................................................. 31 2.3 Summary ................................................................................................................... 37 3 Method and material................................................................................................ 38 3.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................. 38 3.2 Method ...................................................................................................................... 39 3.2.1 Contrastive analysis: A three-step approach.................................................. 39 3.2.2 Previous contrastive research ......................................................................... 45 3.3 Material ..................................................................................................................... 47 3.3.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 47 3.3.2 Comparable corpora ......................................................................................... 47 3.3.3 Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) ............................................... 48 3.3.4 Corpus del Español (CDE) ................................................................................. 49 3.3.5 Retrieving language data from COHA and CDE............................................... 50 3.3.6 Process of sorting relevant data from the irrelevant..................................... 52 4 Discussion and results ............................................................................................. 53 4.1 Introduction.............................................................................................................

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