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On appreciative suffixes

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Acta Linguistica Hungarica

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate that appreciative suffixes (AS) in Catalan,as well as in other Romance languages, belong to a single group of affixes,independently of the lexical root that they adjoin to. We focus our attentionon the semantics of nouns and adjectives that contain an AS. We justify theapparent differences among the derived words by proposing that the AS actsas a modifier of some features of the lexical conceptual structure of theroot. We assume Jackendoff's proposal (1990; 1991) for nouns, and we extendthe features [±b, ±i] (bounded and individual) as well as thedimensional feature to adjectives. Only roots containing a [+b] feature willbe able to be modified by an AS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament de Filologia i Filoso ã, Universitat de Girona, Pl. Ferrater Mora, 1, 17071, Girona. E-mail

    Lluïsa Gràcia & Lídia Turon

Authors
  1. Lluïsa Gràcia
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  2. Lídia Turon
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Gràcia, L., Turon, L. On appreciative suffixes. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 47, 231–247 (2000). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014018732641

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1014018732641

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