The Diminutive Suffix "-et/-ette": The Role of the Internet in its Study

Abstract

The English language is usually said to be poor in diminutive resources and its apparently few diminutive expressions are considered unproductive. However, these are assumptions not normally supported with real data. Indeed, Schneider’s seems to be the only systematic work on the diminutive in English, although it does not make use of modern electronic corpora. This paper analyses the behaviour of the English diminutive suffix “-et/-ette” by using different sources: grammars, dictionaries, monographs, the British National Corpus and the Internet. Searches on the net have been responsible for the most interesting discoveries, some of which contradict previous studies about this suffix.