Diminutives in Brazilian Portuguese: suffixation or infixation?

Authors

  • Maximiliano Guimarães
  • Gesoel Mendes

Keywords:

Morphology, Diminutive, Brazilian Portuguese, Suffixation, Infixation.

Abstract

Here we entertain the possibility of analyzing the diminutive morpheme ‘inh’ of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) as an infix, rather than as a suffix. Therefore, we argue against the tradition of (descriptive and analytical) morphological studies in BP. We show that, surprisingly, our unorthodox hypothesis not only accounts for the run-of-the-mill data more naturally than
the competing analyses, but also accounts for some non trivial additional data that has been ignored so far.

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Published

2016-04-04

How to Cite

Guimarães, M., & Mendes, G. (2016). Diminutives in Brazilian Portuguese: suffixation or infixation?. Estudos Linguísticos (São Paulo. 1978), 40(1), 364–378. Retrieved from https://revistas.gel.org.br/estudos-linguisticos/article/view/1402

Issue

Section

Morfologia