Abstract:
The topic of substantive diminutives in Upper Sorbian has already been written about, notably in the recently published monograph by Małgorzata Milewska-St- awiany Stawiany “Górnołużyckie deminutywa w systemie językowym aw tekście” (Gdańsk 2012). In contrast, adjectival diminutives have received only marginal consideration. For example, in some overviews of Upper Sorbian word formation a selection of elements which help to form adjectival diminutives was at least presented, with the formation of suffixes taking center stage. However, the description of the significance of adjectival diminutives and their elements remains vague and not very meaningful. As material for our analysis, we used excerpts from Sorabistic specialist literature and the most important Upper Sorbian dictionaries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as the Upper Sorbian digital corpus (hotko, www.korpus.cz), which contains different categories of texts from the nineteenth century until the present. The semantically modified adjectives are divided into two groups: 1. adjectives that are weakened and 2. adjectives that are enhanced, including hypocoristics.
