Form und Funktion des Diminutivs im luxemburgisch-moselfränkischen Übergangsgebiet

Doctoral thesis (2017)

Diminutive formation is a common word formation process of the Luxembourgish (Lux.) lan-guage and the neighbouring Moselle-Franconian (MsFrc) dialects. The aim of this thesis is to collect and to analyse ... [more ▼]

Diminutive formation is a common word formation process of the Luxembourgish (Lux.) lan-guage and the neighbouring Moselle-Franconian (MsFrc) dialects. The aim of this thesis is to collect and to analyse the characteristics of this process, integrate them into common morpho-logical theories and to establish their geolinguistic properties. On a functional level, the diminutives show the same characteristics in both varieties although the loss of the evaluative meaning is further developed in Lux. than in MsFrc. How-ever, the most apparent differences can be seen on the level of the fomal execution of the di-minutive rule: While the diminutives in MsFrc share many similarities, such as grammatical gender, the singular suffix and to an extent also the plural marking with Standard German, the Lux. language differs greatly from the others. In Lux. the singular formation is quite similar to the one in the other varieties, however, the plural suffix is triggered by the syllabic and prosodic properties of the base noun. Additionally, the grammatical gender of the diminutive is in con-cordance with the gender of the base noun and hence, not influenced by the suffix. The reasons for these peculiar attributes are to be found both in the historical development of the language and its current structural form as well as in its sociolinguistic context. The consequences of the differing structural properties are clearly displayed on a geo-linguistic level. Although the varieties are historically closely related the differing formal ex-pressions of the diminutive meaning lead to the emergence of groups of isoglosses coinciding with the state border. In brief, the history and the present situation of the diminutive serve as evidence that the dialect continuum that once crossed the state border has been falling apart and that it has been replaced by a solid linguistic border that separates the closely related varieties from each other. [less ▲]