Abstract:
The paper focuses on the substance of diminutiveness as well as on the features that characterize the set of deverbal diminutives in Polish. The author presents the inconsequences found in linguistic descriptions of diminutives. The author postulates the introduction of the term prototypical diminutive and peripheral diminutive. The diminutiveness is treated both as a word-formative and a semantic category. The second part of the paper discusses the characteristics of deverbal diminutives, which belong to the so-called peripheral (inproper) diminutives. They possess a few specific traits that differentiate them from denominal diminutives. The pragmatic values that describe this set are emphasized. The author draws the attention to the need of a description of the category of diminutiveness in consideration of a diachronic perspective.
