Abstract

MALAVER, Irania. Functions of the diminutive in Venezuelan Spanish. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2018, vol.5, n.2, pp.5-44. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v5i2.113.

The aim of this work is a sociolinguistic study of the diminutive in Venezuelan Spanish. We analyze 72 interviews of Caracas speakers, of different ages and educational levels, belonging to the sociolinguistic Corpus PRESEEA-Caracas 2004-2010 and examine the frequencies, the distribution of the suffix between the lexical bases, the semantic-pragmatic functions and the way in which the social factors of age, sex and level of studies show the extension of the uses of the diminutive suffix in the community of Caracas. According to the results, in the Venezuelan Spanish the predominant diminutive is used with subjective values (irony, respect, intensification, attenuation).

Keywords : Diminutives; functions; sociolinguistic; subjectivization; speech of Caracas.