Cumulation of diminutive markers in Modern Greek: an eye on speakers' perspective
Résumé
Evaluative morphology is a hotly debated issue in linguistic theory and has been addressed from different perspectives, either mostly morpho-grammatical or morpho-semantic/pragmatic (e.g. Scalise 1994; Stump 1993; Dressler & Barbaresi 1994). The category of size and its importance for perception and cognition is thought of by many specialists as the major starting point of evaluation (Jurafsky 1996; Prieto 2005 contra Dressler & Barbaresi 1994), which expands encompassing all types of morphological formations that deviate from the default value either quantitatively or qualitatively. Moreover, in many languages evaluative markers carry over simultaneously both quantitative and qualitative readings, plus they can co-occur in the same morphological formation. Modern Greek has a rich inventory of evaluative markers and falls within this category as well. Even though several works have been published on the formal and/or the semantic properties of Modern Greek evaluative morphology (e.g. Efthymiou 2015, 2017, 2023, to appear; Melissaropoulou 2006, 2015; Melisaropoulou & Ralli 2008; Xydopoulos 2009), no detailed studies are available on the co-occurrence of evaluative markers. To this end, the aim of this paper is to investigate: a.the range of evaluatives that can co-occur forming multiple diminutives b.the possible constraints that govern evaluative affix ordering To address these issues, we test empirically the acceptability of different types of cumulative evaluative formations with the use of a e-questionnaire whoseparticipants aged from 19 to 24, are Greek native speakers and students following the classes of the first author. Five experimental conditions containing 16 items each and corresponding to different types of multiple diminutive formations, plus two control conditions (morphophonological and semantic) were tested on a Lickert scale. The statistical analysis (ANOVA) will reveal the differences between these groups of stimuli, allnominal evaluates, in acceptability terms. Our preliminary results show that multiple diminutives are quite acceptable in Modern Greek showing, however, specific ordering and adding different evaluative readings. More specifically: a. recursiveness of the same marker is not a productive evaluation strategy in Greek. b. Specific diminutive suffixes are susceptible to further diminution, e.g. -ul(is)/-a/-i, while others behave as closing suffixes, blocking further suffixation, e.g. the suffixes -aki and-itsa. c. Suffixal evaluative formations can be further affixed with the addition of prefix-like markers, e.g. psilo-, which usually add attitudinal or pragmatic meaning in Greek. Our working hypothesis to be tested more thoroughly is whether the closing status of specific markers is accounted for a. in terms of their greater productivity and lack of severe selectional restrictions (Manova & Winternitz 2011) b. in terms of the vaster range of evaluative readings the latter may realize compared to the non-closing suffixes and c. or in terms of both and possibly other lexical or register restrictions as well. References Dressler, Wolfgang. U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi. 1994. Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German and other languages, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Dressler, Wolfgang U., Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia, Schwaiger, Sonja, Ransmayr, Jutta, Sommer-Lolei, Sabine & Katharina Korecky-Kröll. 2019. 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Headedness in diminutive formation: Evidence from Modern Greek and its Dialectal Variation. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55, 138-204.
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