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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. 51–80

Diminutives and augmentatives in Beja (North-Cushitic)

 | LLACAN (CNRS-INALCO-Université Sorbonne Paris-Cité)
 | Ahlia University, Omdurman, Sudan
The evaluative morphology of Beja consists of four devices: gender shift to feminine on nouns, and sound change (r>l) on nouns, verbs and adjectives form the diminutives. A suffix -loːj on adjectives, and -l on Manner converbs, form the augmentatives. The analysis focuses on the evaluative, emotional and other pragmatic values associated with these morphemes, size, endearment, praise, romantic love, contempt, politeness and eloquence. When relevant, the links to the general mechanism of semantic change, lambda-abstraction-specification proposed by Jurafsky (1996), is discussed. This paper also discusses productivity, cases where the evaluative device has scope over an adjacent noun instead of its host, the distribution of values across semantic domains and genres, and cases of lexicalization. The corpus analysis shows that the proportional frequency of pragmatic expressive connotations compared to the denotational meaning is higher for diminutives than for augmentatives. Further, with diminutives, positive emotional values are more frequent than negative ones, while with augmentatives attested pejorative values are very rare. The analysis is set within a typological framework.
Keywords: Beja, evaluative morphology, diminutive, augmentative, gender, emotion
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Diminutives
    • 2.1Gender shift: masculine > feminine
      • 2.1.1Frequency and semantic domains
      • 2.1.2Semantics and pragmatics
        • 2.1.2.1Body parts
          • a.Denotational meaning
          • b.Lexicalizations
        • 2.1.2.2Geographical terms
          • a.Emotions
          • b.Denotational meaning
        • 2.1.2.3Artefacts
          • a.Emotions
          • b.Denotational meaning
      • 2.1.3Summary
    • 2.2The shift alveolar trill r > alveolar lateral approximant l
      • 2.2.1Frequency and semantic domains
      • 2.2.2Semantics and pragmatics
        • 2.2.2.1Body parts
          • a.Denotational meaning and quasi-lexicalizations
          • b.Denotational meaning and rhetoric
          • c.Emotions
        • 2.2.2.2Geographical terms and natural elements
          • a.Denotational meaning
          • b.Lexicalization
          • c.Emotions
        • 2.2.2.3Derived nouns
        • 2.2.2.4Adjectives
          • a.Denotational meaning
          • b.Emotions and rhetoric
        • 2.2.2.5Verbs
          • a.Denotational meaning
          • b.Pragmatics and politeness
          • c.Emotions
      • 2.2.3Summary
  • 3.Augmentatives
    • 3.1Gender shift on nouns: feminine > masculine
    • 3.2Adjectives and the suffix -loːj
      • 3.2.1Denotational meaning
      • 3.2.2Emotional meaning
      • 3.2.3Summary
    • 3.3Manner converbs and the suffix -l
      • 3.3.1Denotational meaning
      • 3.3.2Lexicalization
      • 3.3.3Habituality
      • 3.3.4Emotions
      • 3.3.5Summary
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Sources
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 19 April 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.00003.van
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