Re: Aragonese, Catalan & Provencal -- long
| From: | Joe <joe@...> |
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| Date: | Thursday, September 4, 2003, 15:50 |
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----- Original Message -----
From: "Christophe Grandsire" <christophe.grandsire@...>
To: <CONLANG@...>
Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2003 12:13 PM
Subject: Re: Aragonese, Catalan & Provencal -- long
<<More exactly, -ette is both diminutive and feminine in French (the
masculine diminutive is -et). So the transition is not that non-trivial,
especially since even in French the diminutive part of the suffix is not
strongly felt anymore (due to the presence of a lot of feminine words
ending in -ette where the non-ette equivalent has disappeared. For
instance, we have the word "clarinette" for a certain music instrument, but
no *"clarin" or *"clarine". A blonde is commonly called a "blondinette",
but we don't have *"blondin" nor *"blondine"). The transition already
partly takes place in French itself. So it's not so surprising that English
would borrow the suffix with its feminine sense only.>>
Although, it doesn't I know English uses -ette in a diminutive sense,
though I don't have any examples on hand...
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