The Diminutive in English and Arabic: A Comparative study

Abstract

       Carrying out comparative studies may pave the way for knowing some universal facts about human language and the common characteristics the compared languages have. The present study tackled one phenomenon of language, the diminutive, which was seen common both to English and Arabic. In English, the diminutive usually shows that something is small and it is either used literally or metaphorically. In Arabic, on the other hand, such meanings are also to be noticed together with the idea that the diminutive mainly means shortening. The paper was divided into three sections and a conclusion. Section one dealt with the diminutive in English giving a definition, talking about the formation of the diminutive, showing the relation between the diminutive and phonology, the diminutive and productivity, the diminutive and borrowing, the diminutive and other languages and afterwards the relation between the diminutive and pragmatics. Section two, on the other hand, was concerned with the diminutive in Arabic where a definition was also given, the functions the diminutive achieve, the conditions for forming the diminutive, the prosodic measures the diminutive follows and the rules and exceptions it follows. Section three was a comparison between the diminutive in English and Arabic. The study ended with mentioning some conclusions the study came out with. It was seen that the two languages differed on the phonological level, some differences were noticed as regards the parts of speech and functions the diminutive perform in each of the two languages.