Re: Degrees of adjectives

--- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Scotto Hlad <scotto@A...> wrote:

>Figures... I find words that I like and something else has them.
>What are the uses of diminutive and augmentative?
Diminutives in English are suffixes on nouns that denote smallness,
youth, familiarity, or affection:
book-let; lamb-kin; brick-ette; duck-ling; dogg-y (with gemination to
preserve the /g/).

Augmentatives are suffixes on nouns that denote largeness or
grossness.  I can't think of any in English.  Italian has -one and
Spanish has -ón.  Sometimes adverbs can be used with verbs for
augmentation:
I ate it; I ate it up; I ate it all up.
The house burned; the house burned down/up.

BTW the word can also be augmentive.

Charlie
http://wiki.frath.net/User:Caeruleancentaur