Lamunkhin Even evaluative morphology in cross-linguistic comparison

Cross-linguistic research has shown diminutives to be more widespread than augmentatives: they are found in more languages, attach to a wider variety of bases, and occur more frequently in discourse. Common features of such affixes are their categorial neutrality and the changes they bring about in the semantics of the base. The evaluative morphology of Lamunkhin Even, the westernmost still viable dialect of this Northern Tungusic language, differs strikingly from this cross-linguistic pattern. The evaluative suffixes form a structured set of diminutives and augmentatives with a primary function of size denotation. Typologically rare features of these morphemes are the transference of evaluative meaning from adjectives to their head noun and from verbs to their subject as well as their use to derive adjectives and adverbs from descriptive verbs. These suffixes show different base specifications: some are restricted to nominals, others to verbs, and only one diminutive-augmentative pair occurs with a wide variety of bases; this has also developed disparate semantics. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.