What is it about?
Diminutives are expressions found in practically all languages, but this article aims to test a hypothesis that Slovene uses diminutive forms more frequently than English. An analysis of diminutive forms used in Dahl’s Matilda and its Slovene translation is carried out, showing that Slovene indeed prefers to use diminutives more frequently than English. A tendency can be established for Slovene to form diminutives by word-formational means in the categories of noun and verb. In verbs, English tends towards neutrality of expression. Frequent use of multiple diminutiveness and the ability of analytic and synthetic diminutive forms to be freely interchangeable in Slovene testify to the strong presence of diminutive forms in the language system.
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Why is it important?
Our findings show that English tends to use fewer diminutive expressions, while Slovene (along with some other Slavic languages) abounds in evaluative expressions.
Perspectives
I hope this article gives a slightly different perspective on the evaluative nature of various languages; the pragmatic view of diminutive use and of how deeply rooted the use of such structures can be in a certain language may offer a glimpse of the nature of a language and its speakers in general.
Eva Sicherl
University of Ljubljana
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This page is a summary of: A comparison of diminutive expressions in English and Slovene
as exemplified by Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Languages in Contrast, November 2017, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/lic.15016.sic.
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