The Use of Diminutives in the Works of the 16th-Century Slovene Protestant Writers

Abstract

The article outlines the extent of diminutive nouns used in the works of the 16th century Slovene Protestant writers. The author lays out the derivational methods, frequency distribution of the typical suffixe, and the semantic rangeof the use of deminutives. The descpription is based on the complete excerpt of the Protestant works and on alphabetized lists of the compiled lexicon, several verification processes were performed in determinig the actual system of diminutive nouns (e.g. analysis of contextual use, comparisonwith the translation source texts, comparison of formulations in various editions of the same text).