Diminutive suffixes in the German language: an investigation of the -chen and -lein morphemes in the Baby Talk

The German language is one of those languages that allow the formation of the diminutive form, which is created - according to the grammar books – by adding either the suffix -chen or -lein to the noun. Even if the grammar allows it, the frequency of use is not so high as in other languages. Hence, German native speakers tend to use other constructions to conceive a similar meaning., e.g., the use of the adjective "klein" before the noun to emphasize the differences in terms of size. The starting point of the present work finds its roots in the accurate study by W. U. Dressler – L. Merlini Barbaresi (1994), that present the evaluative morphology of the German language in a cross-linguistical point of view. However, the present paper will offer an outline of the German evaluative morphology in its own language system, especially, observing and analyzing the German spoken language. The analysis on which the paper is based has been carried out through a questionnaire that has been submitted to native German speakers – for a matter of reliability – and in particular to those German people that are mainly parents of very young children or that in some way have kids in their everyday life. By this questionnaire it has been possible to detect many features about the frequency of use of the diminutives and their differences of use according to a given context. Therefore, two contexts of communication have been considered: the first one should reassemble a normal everyday context in which adults have conversations with their peers, while in the second one adults find themselves in a conversation with children. The reason of the choice of this target linked to the main hypothesis from which this work is born: German diminutive forms are mainly used in the baby talk.