INTERACTION BETWEEN DIMINUTIVITY AND GENDER OF THE NOUNS DENOTING PROFESSIONS IN BULGARIAN

Abstract

The present paper examines some aspects of the interaction between diminutivity and gender of personal nouns (especially ones formed with the suffix -che) in contemporary Bulgarian (for the present, the augmentatives are not an object of our study). The author demonstrates the existence of a correlation between the semantics of neuter nouns and diminutives. It is emphasized that neuter nouns for professions or posts are not used regarding children because, as a rule, those professions or posts are only performed or occupied by adults. Aside from the semantics, stylistic features of diminutives, such as their expressiveness are also examined (I agree with the authors who put stress on the pejorativity of the nouns with the suffix -che). I use examples of informal written language (the sources are two Facebook groups) and informal spoken language (the difference between both forms of language is that with the written one the rules are a little more strictly observed). I reach the conclusion that with personal nouns, which do not nominate children, there is not a real gender triad – the semantic opposition looks as follows: masculine ~ feminine, for instance, uchitel ~ uchitelka, whereas the diminutive uchitelche is only a member of the formal opposition and it does not belong to the semantic one – it does not perform the function of naming a child, but, as the examples show, it most often nominates a male person.