--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
...
Verrry nice!
> For the relation between diminutive and feminine, cf. Dutch
> mens "person", mensje "(old) woman" etc.;
Unless I am grievously mistaken the correlation holds only in the
plural ("mensen" vs. "mensjes"), and even then not very strongly
because one could easily use "mensjes" sex-indifferently to refer to
a diminutive variety of humans. In my language the singular "mens"
means either 'human being' (common gender) or 'woman' (neuter). The
former meaning strikes me as bookish if provided with the definite
article ("de mens"), but if provided with an indefinite article ("een
mens") it's quite OK. The latter meaning is perceived only if some
overt sign of the neuter gender is present somewhere, so the
collocation "een mens" cannot easily mean 'a woman', but "een aardig
mens" (where the absence of an ending in "aardig" signals the neuter
gender) always means 'a nice/kind/friendly woman' and cannot even
begin to mean *'a nice/kind/friendly person or human being'. The
meaning 'woman' may strike one as strange at first sight in
connection with the fact that the word has neuter gender, but the
word tends to underplay or even deny the sexual or reproductive
aspects of women, so the neuter gender does not jar the way it tends
to do in the case of other neuter words referring to women
("meisje", "wijf", "model", etc.). "Dat mens" [neuter] is a very
unkind way of referring to a woman; on the other hand I can't think
of a context in which "die mens" [common] would be appropriate
(perhaps *'that species of hominid'(??)).
[Much of this appears to be present in part or in whole in Danish and
Swedish.]
These facts come in useful if one needs to counter two idées reçues
that are widespread among speakers of Dutch:
(1) It is fairly easy to learn to speak a foreign language perfectly.
(2) Dutch is simple.
Nevertheless the diminutive suffix does impart a feminine element in
some cases, as in "collega" 'colleague/co-worker of either sex'
vs. "collega'tje" 'colleague/co-worker of the feminine sex'. It is
not considered good form to use the latter word.
Sorry for that,
Willem