Diminutives

Today we do diminutives as inflection:

atim
atim	atim+N+AN+Sg

acimosis
acimosis	atim+N+AN+Der/Dim++N+AN+Sg

This is a good thing for a regular process. But another approach would be to do it as derivation, partly with lexicalisation:

acimosis
acimosis	acimosis+N+AN+Sg

One benefit of this latter solution would be to be able to build dictionary entries (thus, with acimosis as an independent lemma):

• dog -> atim
• puppy -> acimosis
• grouse -> pihêw
• prairie chicken -> pihêsis

One possibility could be to do both:

1. Lexicalise all diminutives needed as base forms in the bilingual dictionary
2. Have diminutiv suffixes as a regular inflectional process

The result of ths would be homonymy, two analyses of the same word:

acimosis
acimosis	atim+N+AN+Der/Dim++N+AN+Sg
acimosis	acimosis+N+AN+Sg

This could then be handled in a further analyser, with one of two rules:

• (for the morphologist): choose the +Der/Dim form
• (for the lexicographer): remove the +Der/Dim form

-is vs. -isis

• AW: -is vs. -isis might indicate differences in size as in a scale e.g. small lake, large lake, huge lake etc. AW thinks that scalable objects (an humans and animals) can occur with both the short and long suffixes are cases when the suffixes represent inverse iconicity more syllables = smaller.

Possessive -im

• Which words?
• Before or after the diminutive suffix?

Okimâsis s. 134-135:

• applied to “some nouns” (almost all examples are AN)
  • pahkwêsikan => nipahkwêsikanim, nipahkwêsikanimak
  • also: IN wiyâs

Arok

• Workshop June 2014: Both forms with and without -im should be allowed in the FST because contextual factors can trigger the occurrence of -im. There is however a set that obligatorily take the -im such as in the case of animals e.g. nisîsîpim, etc. nisîsîpimis. It appears the short diminutive follows the -im-

FST

• Lexicons giving -im: ANimDECL, ANimDECLisis, ANimDECLis, ANimDECLw, ANimDECLnaahk, INimDECLw_ONESYLL_SG, INimDECL, INimDECLisis