#  Week of October 9 - Happy Columbus Day! 

 





October 09, 2023

 

 

##  **FoRiM talk**

 A visitor to our department, [Yiyang Guo](/people/yiyang-guo), will give a talk titled *'Diminutives in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin'* in FoRiM this week. Details are as follows:

 **Title**: Diminutives in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin

 **Time**: Fri Oct 13th @ 12 - 1.30pm

 **Location**: Boylston 303

 **Abstract**: This work examines the non-uniform behaviours of the diminutive marker *-er* in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin. We identify two kinds of *-er*, one as a word-level modifier and the other as a root-level nominalizing head, in line with the two sets of morphosyntactic parameters proposed by Wiltschko and Steriopolo (2007). Moreover, we advance a set of semantic parameters (i.e., restriction vs. selection) to account for the compatibility with augmentative modifiers and the necessity of diminutive specification for different types of *er*-diminutives. Our formal analysis of the structure and meaning of *er*-diminutives further sheds light on semantic bleaching and semantic change, revealing a particular semantic mechanism for grammaticalization.



 

 

 



 

 

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