Imeničke umanjenice u kajkavskome književnom jeziku

Although a consensus in the field of Croatian studies exists that Kajkavian idioms - dialects and the Kajkavian literary language alike - are very rich in nominal diminutives, there is a lack of systematic investigation on that topic. This paper discusses nominal diminutives in the Kajkavian literary language, a polyfunctional, standardized idiom which kept its literary function from the 16th century to the 1930’ss. The research corpus is based on the thus far published issues of the Rječnik hrvatskoga kajkavskoga književnog jezika (Dictionary of the Croatian Kajkavian literary Language) and the database of the Institute of Croatian language and linguistics. Nominal diminutives were investigated considering their structure. The scope of the structural analysis includes the inventory of diminutional suffixes, their spectrum and spread, as well as their competition