The use of diminutive constructions in French, English, Dutch and German. A corpus-based study of the crosslinguistic differences

This study falls within the framework of a PhD project on the acquisition of Germanic (English, Dutch and German) diminutive constructions (DCs) by Belgian French-speaking additional language (AL) learners. DCs are defined here to include the entire range of diminishing and downtoning linguistic structures that reduce the force of linguistic items (e.g. sort of pretty [EN], feestje [NL] ‘little party’, kleiner Tisch [DE] ‘small table’). The aim of the PhD project is to investigate the effects of two variables on the acquisition process of diminutive constructions: (1) the crosslinguist... Mehr ...