Trends of Diminutive Relexification in Neapolitan: A Lexicographic Analysis with Comparisons to Spanish and Italian

Abstract

This study marks the third phase of a larger project on diminutive relexification across the Romance languages and provides a quantitative lexicographic analysis of diminutives that have relexified in the history of Neapolitan. When compared to previous results for Spanish and Italian, namely, Phases I and II of the larger study, data suggest that Neapolitan has favored relexification with the -i(e)llo suffix, in both Latin and modern periods, and although much like Italian and Spanish that have relexified with modern non-L-form reflexes such as -ino/-ín and -etto/-ito, it is unlike Italian in that Neapolitan has favored -i(e)llo over -ino, making -etto slightly more common than -ino. The paper concludes that Neapolitan, like its Spanish and Italian counterparts, also supports the early Pan-Romance Diminutive Diasystem as asserted previously by the authors (2021). The theory suggests that the same array of both L-form and non-L-form diminutive endings have served for purposes of diminutivization Romance-wide, but each language differs in accordance with the degree of contact between each region and the center of the Empire during the Latin era, as well as any ensuing contact among each other during the post-Latin period. Such was the four-hundred-year Spanish rule and occupation over the Kingdom of Naples, and the influence Spanish exerted on the Neapolitan lexicon during this period. Keywords: morphology, lexicon, diminutives, Neapolitan, Italian, Spanish