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Diminutives and augmentatives in Mexican Spanish: a prosodic analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 October 2008

Megan J. Crowhurst
Megan J. Crowhurst
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Austin
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Extract

This paper argues for a prosodic constraint on the formation of diminutive and augmentative forms in Mexican Spanish. Specifically, the stem preceding diminutive (dim) and augmentative (aug) suffixes in this dialect must comprise an absolute minimum of two syllables. When a stem melody cannot satisfy the two-syllable minimum, an epenthetic vowel (V) [e] surfaces at the right edge of the stem (e.g. panesito ‘little bread’ ← pan). In the analysis proposed here, a disyllabic template f[σ σ] is mapped to stems from left to right as part of dim/aug-formation. Whether or not a consonant (C)/s/ surfaces before the suffix will be analysed as a consequence of syllabification in some cases (e.g. koronita/koronota← korona ‘crown’ vs.

Type
Articles
Information
Phonology , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , August 1992 , pp. 221 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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