comprehensive approach to evaluative suffixes
Graça Maria Rio-Torto · LaborHistórico · 2025
Evaluative suffixation is a singular field of word-construction, challenging the boundaries of compounding and derivation, semantics and pragmatics and introducing complexity into morpho-lexical systems. Theoretical proposals of wide circulation about evaluatives (v.g. Jurafsky 1996; Bakema/Geeraerts 2004) do not consider Portuguese evaluative suffixal system. We claim that the singularity of Portuguese diminutive and augmentative suffixes is grounded on their one-to-many correspondence between form and meaning/function and on their interaction as descriptive/propositional and/or emotive-attitudinal codifiers. Besides a dimensional meaning, diminutives and augmentatives express the positive/negative value of the speaker's judgment/feeling regarding the object evaluated and/or the interlocutor. This search intends to know how these values can be accommodated in a holistic system of evaluatives. As evaluative affixes serve as attitudinal operators, we assume that pragmatic dimensions are part of their nature. Even more: some diminutively suffixed words may exhibit an intensifying meaning, and some augmentatively suffixed words a diminutive meaning. This article aims to clarify how these antagonistic possibilities coexist and to design a network that accounts for this correlation, highlighting the contribution of Portuguese evaluative system to cognitive approaches, the theoretical framework taken as a reference. Under the metacategory EVALUATION, diminution and augmentation are some of the possible manifestations in theory virtually available, but in practice restricted by historical changes and/or by the usage. Empirical data are selected from renowned studies and lexicographical sources and attested in digital databases. The description also emphasizes the lack of isomorphism, in Portuguese, between suffixal diminution and ‘female/feminine gender’ and between diminution and approximation. The specificity of Portuguese evaluatives, underrepresented in interlinguistic approaches, provides a suitable contribution to the wide-ranging spectrum of evaluative suffixal functioning along the languages.