Investigating the productivity of evaluative morphology: Diminutives of loanwords in Italian

Abstract

In this paper, we build on our previous study of the formal properties of Italian diminutive affixes by extending the analysis to English loanwords. In line with our earlier work, we describe a set of diminutivized loanwords from English through surface alternation patterns and represent the generalizations identified using the theoretical tools of Construction Morphology. This approach allows us to fill a gap in our previous study, namely the assessment of the degree of productivity of the different patterns.