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Re: Aragonese, Catalan & Provencal -- long

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Thursday, September 4, 2003, 11:14
En réponse à Andreas Johansson :


>How did this come into being? I guess the origin is the Frenchy dimunitive, >but the transition dimunitive>feminine seems non-trivial.
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. Christophe Grandsire. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr You need a straight mind to invent a twisted conlang.

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