31 October 2018

Mandarin Chinese “儿 （er)” as a Nominal Diminutive：Analysis from Microscopic Perspective

Xue Lin

Originally considered as a grammatical category, diminutive (e.g. Huddleston & Pullum, 2002) in fact is an evaluative morphological device at the interface of morphology, semantics and pragmatics. This ongoing study addresses linguistic features of Chinese character “儿(er)” as a nominal diminutive and bound morpheme as well in terms of morphology, semantics and pragmatics. The data analysis is fundamentally corpus-based then several traits of this diminutive on form, meaning and function levels are illustrated based on evaluative morphology (e.g. Andrew, 2013) and morphopragmatic discipline (e.g. Dressler and Barbaresi, 1994). The study findings concern this diminutive’s collocation and relevant denotative meaning on morphosemantic level as well as the interface with pragmatic properties.

Key References

Rodney Huddleston & Geoffrey K. Pullum (2002). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wolfgang U. Dressier and Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994). Morphopragmatics: Diminutives and Intensifiers in Italian, German and other Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.