On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:07:59 +0000, pielewe
<
wrvermeer@...> wrote:
>This is a very interesting discussion. Do you guys have an opinion on
>the Hungarian diminutive suffixes containing -k-, particularly -ke/-ka?
>They've always struck me as pretty Slavic-looking, but then I'm an
>amateur and that about exhausts my knowledge of Hungarian ....
I don't have any information about te suffix -ka/-ke either,
although I suspect it is of Slavic origin (considering that
Slavic adjectives were normally borrowed in feminine form
drága, néma, puszta).
According to Alo Raun, the most common Uralic diminutive
suffix is *-kkV, as in F. penikka 'pup', Hu. lélek 'soul',
Enets jahaku 'little river'.
Turning to Greenberg's "IE and its closest relatives", we
see under "DIMINUTIVE *K":
OTurk -k, -ak, mod. Turkic -ka, -ke, with diminutive and
feminine meaning (Karaim kul~ka 'female peasant', Gagauz
qoms^uika 'female neighbour'), Chuvash -k.
Mongolian -ka(n) ~-ke(n) diminitive/feminine suffix (noyan
'prince', noy-ika(n) 'princess').
Korean -k diminutive.
Japanese -ko, formative of female names [Japanese also has a
word ko 'child', prefixed ko-jima 'small island', which I,
unlike Greenberg, think should be kept apart].
Gilyak (Nivx) feminine -k. Diminutive perhaps in kan 'dog'
=> kanak 'rabbit'.
Kamchadal dim. -k'e-c^X (-c^X singulative).
Eskimo dim. (Greenl.) -aR-aq, (Sib. Yupik) -xa-q, -Xa-q,
(Alaska Yupik) -GGa-q.
In IE, the feminine suffix *-ih2 is obviously the
unthematized counterpart of diminutive *-ik-o-.
For the relation between diminutive and feminine, cf. Dutch
mens "person", mensje "(old) woman" etc.; Afro-Asiatic *-at-
feminine, diminutive and singulative suffix.
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...