Cover not available
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
References
Aikhenvald, Alexandra
1999 The Arawak language family. In R. M. W. Dixon & Alexandra Aikhenvald (eds.), The Amazonian languages, 65–106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bauer, Laura
1997 Evaluative morphology: In search of universals. Studies in Language 21(3). 533–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Becerra Casanovas, Rogers
1980 De ayer y de hoy. Diccionario del idioma mojeño a través del tiempo. Estudio comparativo sobre su evolución. La Paz: Proinsa.Google Scholar
Berman, Ruth Aronson & Dan Isaac Slobin
1994 Relating events in narrative: a cross-linguistic developmental study. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Brown, Penelope & Stephen Levinson
1987 Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Butler, Nancy E.
2003 The multiple functions of the definite article in Terena. Ms. Reprint Edition.Google Scholar
Butler, Nancy E. & Muriel Ekdahl
2012 Aprenda Terena. Anápolis: SIL Brasil.Google Scholar
Creissels, Denis
1999 Origine et évolution des diminutifs et augmentatifs dans quelques langues africaines. Silexicales 21, 29–35.Google Scholar
Danielsen, Swintha
2007 Baure: An Arawak language of Bolivia (Indigenous Languages of Latin America 6). Leiden: CNWS.Google Scholar
Diewald, Gabriele
2011 Pragmaticalization (defined) as grammaticalization of discourse functions. Linguistics 49(2). 365–390. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dressler, Wolfgang & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi
1994 Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German, and other languages. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gill, Wayne
1957 Trinitario grammar. San Lorenzo de Mojos: Misión Nuevas Tribus.Google Scholar
1993 Diccionario Trinitario-Castellano y Castellano-Trinitario. Ms. Reprint Edition.Google Scholar
Grandi, Nicola
2011 Renewal and innovation in the emergence of Indo-European evaluative morphology. In Lívia Körtvélyessy & Pavel Stekauer (eds.), Diminutives and augmentatives in the languages of the world, 61 vols. (Lexis), 5–25.Google Scholar
2015 The place of evaluation within morphology. In Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology, 75–90. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Grandi, Nicola & Lívia Körtvélyessy
2015 Introduction: Why evaluative morphology? In Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology, 3–20. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Heine, Bernd & Tania Kuteva
2002 World lexicon of grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Höller, Alfredo
1932 Grammatik der Guarayo-Sprache. Hall in Tirol: Verlag der Missionsprokura der P.P. Franziskaner.Google Scholar
Jurafsky, Daniel
1996 Universal tendencies in the semantics of the diminutive. Language 72(3). 533–78. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
LeSourd, Philip S.
1995 Diminutive verb forms in Passamaquoddy. International Journal of American Linguistics 61(1). 103–34. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marbán, Pedro
1702 Arte de la lengua Moxa, con su Vocabulario, y Cathecismo. Lima: Imprenta Real de Joseph de Contreras.Google Scholar
Marcus, Inge
1994 Classifiers in Terêna. Estudos Linguísticos XXIII(2). 912–9.Google Scholar
Matisoff, James A.
1992 The mother of all morphemes. Augmentatives and diminutives in areal and universal perspective. In Martha Ratliff & Eric Schiller (eds.), Papers from the first annual meeting of the Southeast Asian Linguistics Society, 293–349. Tempe: Arizona State University.Google Scholar
Mayer, Mercer
1969 Frog, where are you? (Dial Books for Young Readers). New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Mission, New Tribes
2002 Eto ‘chojriicovo mue ‘ma viya [The New Testament]. Sanford: New Tribes Mission.Google Scholar
Mutz, Katrin
2015 Evaluative morphology in a diachronic perspective. In Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology, 142–54. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Náñez Fernández, Emilio
1973 El diminutivo: historia y funciones en el español clásico y moderno. Gredos.Google Scholar
Nieuwenhuis, Paul
1985 Diminutives. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh PhD dissertation.Google Scholar
Olza Zubiri, Jesús, Conchita Nuni de Chapi & Juan Tube
2002 Gramática Moja Ignaciana. Caracas: Universidad Católica Andres Bello.Google Scholar
Ott, Willis & Rebecca Ott
1967 Ignaciano. In Esther Matteson (ed.), Bolivian Indian Grammars, vol. I1, 85–137. University of Oklahoma: SIL.Google Scholar
1983 Diccionario ignaciano y castellano, con apuntes gramáticales, 21 vols. Cochabamba: Instituto Lingüístico de Verano.Google Scholar
Pakendorf, Brigitte
2016 Lamunkhin Even evaluative morphology in cross-linguistic comparison. Morphology. 1–36.Google Scholar
Payne, David
1987 Some morphological elements of Maipuran Arawakan: Agreement affixes and the genitive construction. Language Sciences 9(1). 57–75. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1991 A classification of Maipuran (Arawakan) languages based on shared lexical retentions. In Desmond Derbyshire & Geoffrey Pullum (eds.), Handbook of Amazonian languages, vol. 31, 355–499. Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Ponsonnet, Maïa
2014 The language of emotions: The case of Dalabon (Australia). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2018 A preliminary typology of emotional connotations in morphological diminutives and augmentatives. In Maïa Ponsonnet & Marine Vuillermet (eds), Morphology and emotions across the world’s languages. Special issue of Studies in Language, 42(1).Google Scholar
Reynoso Noverón, Jeanett
2005 Procesos de gramaticalización por subjetivización: el uso del diminutivo en español. In David Eddigton (ed.), Selected proceedings of the 7th Hispanic linguistics symposium, 79–86. Somerville: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.Google Scholar
Rose, Françoise
2008 The word-prosodic system of Mojeño Trinitario and pervasive vowel deletion. Paper presented at A Estrutura de Línguas Amazônicas: Fonologia e Gramática II, Recife.
2010 Dialectes en danger: les derniers locuteurs du mojeño javeriano de Bolivie. In Colette Grinevald & Michel Bert (eds.), Faits de Langues, vol. 35–361, Linguistique de terrain sur langues en danger: locuteurs et linguistes, 255–64. Paris: Ophrys.Google Scholar
2011 Who is the third person ? Fluid transitivity in Mojeño Trinitario. International Journal of American Linguistics 77(4), special issue on Argument-encoding systems in Bolivian Amazonian languages. 469–94. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2014 When vowel deletion blurs reduplication in Mojeño Trinitario. In Gale Goodwin Gómez & Hein van der Voort (eds.), Reduplication in South-American languages (Brill’s Studies in the Indigenous Languages of the Americas 7), 375–99. Leiden: Brill. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
2015 Mojeño Trinitario. In Mily Crevels & Peter Muysken (eds.), Lenguas de Bolivia, vol 3. Oriente, 59–97. La Paz: Plural Editores.Google Scholar
Saito, Akira
2009 “Fighting against a hydra”: Jesuit Language Policy in Moxos. In Shinzo Kawamura & Cyril Veliath (eds.), Beyond the borders: Global perspective of Jesuit mission history, 350–63. Tokyo: Sophia University Press.Google Scholar
Scalise, Sergio
1984 Generative morphology. Dordrecht: Foris. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Štekauer, Pavel
2015 Word-formation processes in evaluative morphology. In Nicola Grandi & Lívia Körtvélyessy (eds.), Edinburgh handbook of evaluative morphology, 43–60. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar
Stump, Gregory T.
2008 How peculiar is evaluative morphology? Journal of Linguistics 29(01). 1. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Traugott, Elisabeth
2010 Revisiting subjectification and intersubjectification. In Kristin Davidse, Lieven Vandelanotte & Hubert Cuyckens (eds.), Subjectification, intersubjectification and grammaticalization, 29–70. Berlin: DeGruyter.Google Scholar
Wierzbicka, Anna
1984 Diminutives and depreciatives: Semantic representation for derivational category. Quaderni di Semantica 51. 123–30.Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 1 other publications

Krasnoukhova, Olga
2022. Attributive modification in South American indigenous languages. Linguistics 60:3 ► pp. 745 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.