Деминутивите в съпоставителен аспект – върху материал от български, руски и румънски
Diminutives in a comparative perspective – based on material from Bulgarian, Russian and Romanian

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this article is to analyze some of the pragmatic meanings of diminutives in the Bulgarian, Russian and Romanian languages. It starts with a presentation of the semantic structure of diminutives, which distinguishes between the proper diminutive (diminishing) and the valuational (pragmatic) meaning. The article then explores the dependence of the appraisements expressed through diminutives from the context and function of the so-called peripheral linguistic elements displaying diminutiveness. Although the positive pragmatic meanings of diminutives in Bulgarian, Russian and Romanian are the most prominent ones, their negative (pejorative) meanings are in the main focus of the offered comparative analysis. The similarities found across the three languages in the pragmatics of the s.c. depreciatives are not coincidental and call for a detailed analysis. To that end, the cognitive approach has been used to establish that the persistent negative connotations of different nouns denoting various social roles (such as писателче, адвокатче in Bulgarian, писателишко, адвокатишка in Russian, scriitoraş, avocățel in Romanian) are rooted in the cognitive association with attributes like ‘petty’, ‘inferior’, i.е. lacking (in sufficient degree) the necessary qualities to perform the respective social role.

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