Isleño Diminutives / 1ISLEÑO SPANISH DIMINUTIVES

ABSTRACT. Isleño Spanish diminutive suffixes, found in the

conversations of a fluent speaker, create vocabulary with varying

degrees of relatedness to their original lexical bases. Not all

diminutives are productive: some (-illo, -ete, -uela) are

lexicalized; only -ito is used creatively. Semantically,

diminutives may indicate small size, but an important function of

-ito is pragmatic: it signals the speaker's affection, intensity

or emphasis on the word and the phrase in context. The creative

use of diminutives in Isleño Spanish demonstrates that although

the dialect is endangered, it is not moribund or pragmatically

impoverished.

1. INTRODUCTION. Diminutive suffixes in Spanish are known for their

variability is form and flexibility in meaning. Regional

variation for diminutives is summarized in Pountain (2003), while

allomorphic variation is discussed from several theoretical

standpoints in phonology in Crowhurst (1992), Eddington (2002),

Harris (1994) and Jaeggli (1980), among others. The purpose of

Isleño Diminutives / 2this article is to classify the diminutive suffixes in the speech

of an Isleño Spanish dominant speaker (henceforth RE), who used

the suffix for pragmatic purposes of emphasis and affection, as

well as the standard semantic notion of smallness of size. His

creative use of diminutives indicates that Isleño Spanish is not

impoverished or defective, although it is declining.

2. A GRAMMATICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLEÑO DIALECT OF SPANISH. Isleño Spanish

is characterized as an archaic, rural variety of Spanish, begun

in south Louisiana in 1778, from Canary Island ancestry. Like its

Caribbean Spanish congeners, it contains syllable-final /s/

aspiration and deletion (/mi sAngRe e EhpA¯ol/ 'my blood is

Spanish'), /D/ and /R/ deletion (/bERDA/ 'truth', /sERBi/ 'to

serve'), the interchange of /l r/, called trueque de líquidas (/mAlde

pAlde/ 'mother, father'), but has no velarization of word-

final /n/ common to Caribbean Spanish /bjEn/ 'good' (Lipski

1990). Like other endangered languages (Campbell and Muntzel

1989), Isleño Spanish contains code-mixing with English ('He's a

good , stylistic shrinkage and morphological and syntactic

reduction. Its lexicon contains archaisms from the Canary

Isleño Diminutives / 3Islands (chipía 'light rain'), popular Caribbean terms (jaiba

'crab') and borrowings from Cajun French (dogrí 'pintail duck').

Currently, all Isleño Spanish speakers are bilingual with

English, but no statistical data is available to chart the

population of fluent speakers in south Louisiana.

The data on the Isleño dialect for this paper come from RE,

who was born in 1897 in Delacroix Island, and spent his entire

life building boats and earning a living in the marshlands of

southeastern Louisiana (see map).

Insert FIGURE 1

RE had no formal schooling in either Spanish or English, but he

taught himself to read from the newspapers and other print

materials that made their way to the Isleño community. His

Spanish-dominant speech represents the "best" conversational

Isleño Spanish, although perhaps 25 other speakers are proficient

in the dialect. RE could produce a variety of registers, from

singing the traditional folksong (called décimas) to chatting

with tourists, and his love of conversation and interaction has

yielded over 100 hours of audiotaped discourse.

Isleño Diminutives / 4In terms of allomorphs of the diminutive as the focus of

this paper, -ito, -illo, -ín, -eta and -uela are attested forms in

the speech of RE from the data collected in a set of 23 hours of

interviews about the ecology of the marshlands, which have come

to be known as the Te lo dije ('I told you so') narratives, in which

RE remembers the abundance of the past, discusses the fragility

of the present and warns of the dangers in the future of the

swamps of southeastern Louisiana.

3. DIMINUTIVES IN SPANISH. Spanish contains seven diminutive

suffixes (Gooch 1970): -ejo, -ete, -ico, -illo, -ín, -ito, -uelo. These

suffixes are inflected for number and gender, depending on their

lexical base to which they attach.

Fontanella (1962:556) opines that the expressive value of

diminutives in Spanish is one of the most interesting and

attractive topics in morphology. The complexity of explaining the

affective meanings of diminutives lies in the "interplay" of

semantics, pragmatics and morphology (Santibáñez Sáenz 1999:

184): the meaning of the diminutive derives from the lexical base

to which it attaches and the textual unit in which it lies.

Isleño Diminutives / 5Therefore, according to Santibáñez Sáenz (1999:175), the meaning

of bromita can be either 'nasty little joke' or 'small prank,'

depending on the context.

The measurement of a small size is, of course, relative to

the "normal" size of objects that are stored as Idealized

Cognitive Models (ICMs), which incorporate the description of the

object in its lexical subcategorization (Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez

1998). A small church (iglesita) is much larger than a small case

for pencils (estuchito), but both are reduced in size relative to a

standard conception (Fernández Alcalde, 4).

The notion of size can be extended metaphorically to other

common nouns, to indicate short length or duration (callecita

'short, narrow street'), and to adjectives to indicate reduction

in intensity (calentito 'not too hot') (Zuluaga Ospina 1993:313).

The characterization of diminutives carries the corollaries

of likeability and unimportance (Santibáñez Sáenz 1999: 176).

Small things can either be cute (pajarito 'little bird') or trivial

(favorcito 'tiny favor'). Naming something as small, even when the

norm is not, is pleasant (gordita 'plump') or unpleasant (reyecito

'minor potentate'), according to the subcategorization of the

Isleño Diminutives / 6lexical base. Gooch (1970:8-10) states that while the meaning -ito

may be favorable or unfavorable, -illo is often pejorative. The

"satellites" of -ito (-ico and -ín) "have a marked tendency to

favourable, but -ejo and -uelo "have a strong tendency to

unfavourable." The diminutive -ete has "a decidedly jocular

bias."

Zuluaga Ospina 1993:318) points out that on some adjectives

and adverbs the use of -ito actually augments the quality being

expressed: pequeñito 'very small'; blanquito 'very white.'

Thus, the use of the diminutive is not simply an expression

of size but also of the affect of the lexical base (Alonso

1951:225) and need not be associated with any variation in size

(Lázaro Mora 1976: 44).

Let us turn categorize the use of the diminutive in Isleño

Spanish from the speech of RE.

4. THE DIMINUTIVE IN ISLEÑO SPANISH. In Isleño Spanish, two morphs of

the diminutive are not found at all in this corpus: -ico and -ejo.

It is a little surprising that -ico is absent because it is a

regional variant for Cuba, Colombia and Costa Rica (Lipski

Isleño Diminutives / 71994:233). Cuba has some similarity to Isleño Spanish and a

history of contact; however, although speakers of Cuban Spanish

have entered Isleño territory, they have not been numerous enough

to influence the dialect from the Canary Islands into adding

another diminutive. Table 1 shows the lexical items that have

appeared in this corpus.

Insert TABLE 1

The less common diminutive allomorphs have been lexicalized into

vocabulary that is distinct from the meaning of the original

lexical base. Each column from Table 1 will be described.

4.1. -ILLO. The commonly pejorative -illo is found only lexicalized

in RE's narratives. The everyday clothing item calzoncillo

'underpants' is related to calzón 'shorts' (itself an augmentative

of calza 'stockings'):

(1) siempre llevo los calcetines encima de las botas y los calzoncillos sobre los

pantalones

'I always wear socks over my boots and underpants over

pants.'

Isleño Diminutives / 8Not common in Isleño wear, chaparilla is a type of wooden clog

for marionette puppets, which may be derived from chaparro because

of the oak material of which the shoes are made but now bears

little relation to the original word of the tree (Corominas

1994:191). RE's children's song contains the one attestation of

chaparillo:

(2) Al chaparilla o chinelas / y a catapún, catapún, catapún / Como los

muñecos en el pum, pum, pum

'The clogs or pattens / go bang! bang! bang! / Like

puppets do, with a bang! bang! bang!'

Neither of these tokens contains the implicit pejorative affect

described by Gooch, because they have been lexicalized into

unique objects, thus removing the pragmatic affect.

4.2 -ETE. bayoneta ' bayonet' has the diminutive suffix attached

to a lexical base representing the city of Bayonne, where the

short dagger was originally fabricated (Corominas 1994:90).

(3) la bayoneta no es nada

'a bayonet is nothing'

Isleño Diminutives / 9If a "jocular" bias is noted, as Gooch (1970) indicates, it is

not about this word itself, and there is no indication that RE's

narrative is humorous in nature.

4.3 -ÍN. The common item of clothing calcetín 'sock' comes from

calza 'stocking, hose':

(4) lleve los calcetines encima de las botas

'wear your socks over your boots'

Again, lexicalization removes the "favorable" bias in the

diminutive.

Proper names with diminutives have been lexicalized:

Acrelín (or Acrerín, with a trueque de líquidas between the /l/ and /R/)

is an Isleño place name in south Louisiana, which is related to

the English loanword 'acre':

(5) El acre ese que se llama El Acrelín, usted veía ahí

'The land there that's called The Little Acre, you used

to see here'

Marcelino is a man's name, derived from Marcelo:

(6) un individuo que llamaba Marcelino cogió una trucha grandísima

'an individual named Marcelino caught a huge trout'

Isleño Diminutives / 10Coquino was a high point in the marsh of south Louisiana, the

name of which is unlikely to have a connection to the original

name representing a type of palm tree (coco) of Brazil or Chile

(Webster's New World Dictionary 1972:314):

(7) había una que se llamaba La Isla Coquino

'there was one here that was called The Coquino Island'

4.4 -UELA. The green bean habichuela is derived from haba 'broad

bean' and are connected in a general sense in that they are both

types of beans. There is no indication that a green bean is a

miniature variety of a broad bean.

(8) plantaban habichuelas

'they used to plant green beans'

4.5 -ITO. By far the most common diminutive is -ito in this

corpus. RE used the diminutive suffix -ito in a standard

referential way to indicate small size:

trolito 'small trawl boat':

Isleño Diminutives / 11(9) Bueno, uno de ellos tenía un trolito de 16 o 20 pie o 25 pies

'Well, one of them had a small trawl boat of 16 or 20

feet or 25 feet'

barquito 'small boat':

(10) Escucha, yo no estoy pidiendo por barquito

'Listen, I'm not asking for a small boat'

tapaíto 'small lid':

(11) Digo, tenemos que hacer, no tenemos con un tapaíto.

'I'm saying that we have to do it [cap the well]; we

can't with a small lid.'

-ito also relates to a diminution in length, as in rezadito 'little

prayer' and polito 'short pole':

(12) Vamos a decir un rezadito a Dios

'We're going to say a little prayer to God'

(13) uno solo con los politos chicos, eso cogía más camarón

'one guy, with only short poles, he used to catch more

shrimp'

and a diminution in intensity, as in cansadito 'a little tired':

(14) De tanto bailar está cansadito

'From dancing so much he was a little tired'

Isleño Diminutives / 12Metaphorically, the smallness may be in years of age, as in

muchachito 'young boy':

(15) Esta e una historia nueva de [RE] cuando era muchachito

'This is a new story from [RE] when he was a little boy'

The metaphor may be sarcastic in nature, as in a special use of

poquito 'a few, a little':

(16) Cualquier hombre que tenga un poquito de sesos te lo puede decir

'Any man with a few brains can tell you about it'

Hypocoristically, -ito expresses familiarity with others in

attaching to proper names (Mendoza 1988:165) to form nicknames

that are often more widely used that the original name:

(17) Chelito dice —Los hombres son los hijos del sol; las mujeres de la luna

'Chelito says, "Men are sons of the sun; women of the

moon"'

The idea of augmenting the smallness with the diminutive on a

lexical base highlights the quality of the IC. The augmentative

function also appears in the narratives of RE, as in chiquito

'very small':

Isleño Diminutives / 13(18) antes de eso teníamos toítos chiquitos de dieciséis pies

'before that every last one of us had little ones [boats]

of 16 feet'

poquito 'very little':

(19) El otro zapato era un poquito más grande que el pie

'The other shoe was a little larger than my foot'

This "augmentation of quality" also extends metaphorically, on

the adverb derechito 'straight ahead; right away':

(20) Dios nos va a recoger cuando llegue el día y estamos conformes, felices

por que vamos a ir derechito a la gloria

'God will collect us when the day comes and we are ready,

happy because we are going to go straight to Glory'

and with the noun cuidadito 'with a lot of care, very carefully':

(21) Hay que hacer con cuidadito

'You have to make it very carefully'

The most frequent use of the -ito suffix in Isleño Spanish is not

to convey the idea of diminution, however. In the 23 hours of the

Te lo dije interviews, only 6 out of 26 items were clearly related

to physically "smaller." Likewise in this data, only four tokens

Isleño Diminutives / 14of augmentation of quality were noted in the conversations and

stories in Isleño Spanish.

By far the most frequent use of the -ito suffix was found

when an affective meaning was desired. Two types of affect with -

ito are noted here: the affectionate and the emphatic.

Emotionally, -ito is used to indicate affection, caring or

closeness. In a folksong that RE created about making hot

chocolate from scratch, the term chocolatito 'a little chocolate'

indicates his fondness for the drink:

(22) Hay que hacer con cuidadito / Porque así, el chocolatito va; no se derrama

/ Yo cuando trae para acá trae para acá, dulce chocolatito / Qué dulce y

sabroso es / Sin pensar en el potito

'You have to make it very carefully / because then the

chocolate won't spill / And when I carry it here, right

here, the sweet little cup of hot chocolate / How sweet

and tasty it is / without thinking about my little butt'

Likewise, he always referred to the wildlife of the area, which

were in danger of extinction from pollution or overfishing and

overhunting, as animalitos, whether they were alligators or shrimp:

Isleño Diminutives / 15(23) no hay ningún animalito que pueda vivir en esa clase de agua

'there isn't any little animal that could live in that

type of water'

(24) Así, está perdido: el agua salada ha envenenado todos los animalitos que

habían

'So, it was lost: the salt water has poisoned all the

little animals that were around'

Future generations of children, about whom RE worried, are called

pobrecitos, not because they were miserable but because he cared

about their uncertain future in earning a living in the

southeastern marshlands of Louisiana:

(25) pero los pobrecitos niños no van a tener ni tierra para vivir

'but the poor little children aren't going to have any

place to live'

(26) Los pobrecitos que vienen atrás no van a saber lo que era la vida antes

'The poor little children who come after us aren't going

to know what life was like before'

In one narrative RE names a "little old lady" viejita as a term of

endearment:

Isleño Diminutives / 16(27) la viejita contestó —Aquí no hay barco ninguno, señor

'The little old lady answered, "Here there are no boats

whatsoever, sir."'

It identifies her throughout the narrative and is used as a

proper name wold be. In no instance is an elderly woman referred

to elsewhere as vieja 'old,' which is simply impolite, or mayor

'elderly,' a neutral adjective.

In the narratives, songs and conversations of RE, by far the

greatest use of -ito is intended for emphasis, especially with

todo + ito, often pronounced as toíto [t5oit5o]. González Ollé

(1962:205) says that the emphatic use of the diminutive

guarantees the intensity or authenticity of the sentiment. RE

uses the intensity to underscore his predictions:

(28) Si vamos a seguir con esa clase de gente, vamos a estar toíto

ahogándonos en el mismo barco

'If we're going to continue with that class of people, we

all, every last one of us, are going to drown in the same

boat'

Isleño Diminutives / 17(29) No hay nadie que te va a ayudar. E toíto dinero...

'There is nobody who is going to help you. It's all about

the money...'

Positive evaluation

(30) esa fue la cosa mejor que pudieron hacer y fue toíto hecho por los isleños

'that was the best thing that they could have done and

absolutely all of it was done by the Isleños

(31) queremos que toditos nosotros seamos hijos de Dios

'We want absolutely every one of us to be children of

God'

(32) Porque Dios hizo toíto posible para nosotros

'Because God did absolutely everything possible for us'

Negative evaluation

(33) cuando pusieron el agua al río se empezaron a morir toítos

'when they put water in the river absolutely everything

began to die'

(34) Arruinaron toíto en el estado

'They ruined absolutely everything in the state'

Isleño Diminutives / 18The intensification of todo comes from RE's intent to signal each

and every member of a count noun class:

(35) Cuando quitaron el agua del río, toditos ellos se murieron

'When they took water out of the river, every last one of

them died'

or to signal the all-encompassing quality of a non-count noun

class:

(36) Bueno, nos quitaron toíto eso también

'Well, they took away absolutely all of that too'

While todo, which may be pronounced [toDo to too] and inflected

for number when used as a count noun, is also found in the data,

it is a neutral term used when RE has no emotional investment in

the statement.

(37) Todo lo que hay en este mundo, todo ha sido natural

'Everything that there is in this world, everything has

been natural'

It frequently begins a narrative, but toíto pops up as RE becomes

more impassioned in his speech. We will discuss the frequency of

-ito diminutives in the next section.

Isleño Diminutives / 195. FREQUENCY OF DIMINUTIVE USE. The speaker RE of Isleño Spanish

makes full use of the diminutive in speech, but only 8 out of 27

tokens comes from -illo, -ete, -ín and -uelo, used only on nouns,

and lexicalized into new vocabulary items. A full 19 diminutive

tokens from the data (70% of the total) come from the use of -ito

with nouns and one adverb.

Insert TABLE 2

Because this series of lectures is a cautionary tale, the

emphatic use of -ito is prevalent. Of the

-ito lexical items, the most common is toíto, also pronounced as

todito/toítos/toditos.

Insert TABLE 3

Twenty-nine instances (41% of the total use of -ito diminutives)

come from toíto. The unmodified todo (also pronounced too/to) in its

inflectional paradigm is heard in 88 instances:

(37) porque somos todos hijos de Dios

'Because we are all children of God'

The diminutive is used 25% of the time and the root word is used

75% of the time, indicated that toíto has not been lexicalized but

is a choice by the speaker to signal pragmatic function. Other

Isleño Diminutives / 20nouns (animal(es), barco(s), poco, chico, pájaro, reza, cansado, cuidado, derecho,

muchacho and trole) are found in equal numbers to their diminutive

counterparts. The proper name Chelito is only found in that form,

and viejita is used as an identifier in a narrative; it is not

found elsewhere to refer to elderly women. Chocolatito and potito

likewise are found in a song; no other references are found to

their unmodified counterparts. Polito and tapaíto may be located in

other topics, but like many of the other lexical items, they are

found only once in the data.

The frequency of toíto in its emphatic form, along with

animalito and pobrecito, have a clearly affective meaning. RE

employs -ito deliberately to indicate his emotional investment in

the topics at hand. While he does make use of the semantic notion

"small," either literally or figuratively, the pragmatic function

of the diminutive is fully in play. RE controls both the semantic

and pragmatic features of the diminutive to enrich the meaning of

the words.

6. CONCLUSIONS. Spanish diminutives in the Isleño dialect are used

both semantically to indicate relatively small size or short

Isleño Diminutives / 21length or duration, and pragmatically to indicate affect. As a

fluent speaker, RE manipulates the diminutive to add denotative

and affective meaning to his words and phrases. When not

lexicalized, the diminutive suffix acts as a cue to the full

meaning of the root word: in a standard referential way to

indicate reduction in size, length, intensity or number. More

importantly, the diminutive was used to indicate emphasis and

evaluation in the statements. The diminutive activated an

emotional value when inflected on a noun or adverb.

The use of diminutives in Isleño Spanish demonstrates that

although it is a rural and archaic variety without an educational

standard, it is not defective, incomplete or moribund. A fluent

speaker, albeit one of a small population, still enjoyed a

semantic and pragmatic range when using the language.

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FONTANELLA, BEATRIZ. 1962. Algunas observaciones sobre el diminutivo

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Isleño Diminutives / 23GOOCH, ANTHONY. 1970. Diminutive, augmentative, and pejorative

suffixes in Modern Spanish: A guide to their use and

meaning. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

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Indiana University Linguistics Club.

LÁZARO MORA, FERNANDO A. 1976. Compatibilidad entre lexemas

nominales y sufijos diminutivos. Thesaurus 31(1).41-57.

LIPSKI, JOHN M. 1990. The Language of the Isleños: Vestigial

Spanish in Louisiana. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State

University Press.

LIPSKI, JOHN M. 1994. Latin American Spanish. London: Longman.

MENDOZA, MARTHA. 1988. Polite diminutives in Spanish: A matter of

size? Pragmatics and Beyond 139.163-174.

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Isleño Diminutives / 25

FIGURE 1: Isleño communities in Louisiana

Isleño Diminutives / 26

-ITO -ILLO -ETE -ÍN -UELO

animalito calzoncillo bayoneta Acrelín

habichuela

barquito chaparilla calcetín

cansadito Coquino

Chelito Marcelino

chiquito

chocolatito

cuidadito

derechito

muchachito

pobrecito

pajarito

polito

poquito

potito

rezadito

Isleño Diminutives / 27tapaíto

toíto

trolito

viejita

TABLE 1: Diminutives in the Isleño Spanish Te lo dije narratives

Isleño Diminutives / 28

Suffix # of tokens % of total (n=27)

-ito 19 70

-illo 2 7

-ete 1 4

-ín 4 15

-uelo 1 4

TABLE 2: Percentages of Diminutive Suffixes in the Isleño Spanish

Te lo dije narratives

Isleño Diminutives / 29

Lexical Item # of instances % of total (n=71)

toíto(s) / todito(s) 29 41

animalito(s) 9 13

Chelito 4 6

viejita 4 6

barquito(s) 3 4

pobrecito(s) 3 4

poquito 3 4

chiquito 2 3

chocolatito 2 3

pajarito 2 3

rezadito 2 3

cansadito 1 1

cuidadito 1 1

derechito 1 1

muchachito 1 1

polito 1 1

potito 1 1

tapaíto 1 1

trolito 1 1

Isleño Diminutives / 30

TABLE 3: Frequency of -ITO suffix in the Isleño Spanish Te lo dije

narratives