Bartens, Angela, & Sandström, Niclas (2007). Italian diminutives in the light of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. In Juhani Härmä, Eva Havu, Mervi Helkkula, Meri Larjavaara, Mari Lehtinen, & Ulla Tuomarla (Eds.), SILF 2005. Actes du XXIXe Colloque International de Linguistique Fonctionnelle (pp. 31-36). Helsinki: Département des langues romanes de l’Université de Helsinki.
In a previous study (Bartens & Sandström 2006), the authors formulated a number of categories into which the usage of the diminutive in both Italian and Spanish seems to fall. Since the diminutive does not constitute a part of the semantic core, it was supposed to be explicable in terms of NSM. Based on our results, it is suggested that, although culturally seemingly central to both of these Mediterranean cultures, the usages of the diminutive are more diffuse and detailed in Spanish than they are in Italian. By using the semantic primes that operate in the NSM theory, we aim at explicating the various uses of the Italian diminutive.
Sound application of NSM principles carried out without prior training by an experienced NSM practitioner
