MORPHOLOGICAL PECULIARITIES OF DIMINUTIVE SUFFIX -ETTE IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Abstract

This paper focuses on the description of the functional-semantic fields of diminutive unit -ette
or words of affection, and, in particular, on the suffix, which, on the basis of the analysis of the
texts taken from literary texts, proves to be the most widely-used one in English literature.
Diminutive formation is a type of modification, rather than derivation proper, as diminutives
are considered to be “variants of existing words” due to the fact that they “can be replaced by
their base forms in many contexts”. They are “nouns formed from nouns”.