Re: Aragonese, Catalan & Provencal -- long

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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