Le traitement de la suffixation en -et

Suffixed nouns with -ET have up to fithteen different meanings. These meanings are distributed between a Referent pole and a Speaker pole. They are structured as a radial category, the central meaning of which is "smallness", on the model of an Idealized Cognitive Model. This model correlates all the morphological processes yielding the derived -ET nouns. Only the suffixed nouns grouped together within the Referent pole do involve the idea of diminishing and are formed by classical lexeme formation rules. For the others, the link between the base and the derived noun on the one hand, and the semantic import tied to the suffix on the other are accounted for by two different mechanisms: the suffixation says that the derived noun's referent denotes something familiar to the speaker. As for the link between the base and the derived noun, it is established by very general semantic mechanisms which also operate in nominal compounds.Fradin Bernard. Le traitement de la suffixation en -et. In: Langages, 37ᵉ année, n°152, 2003. Quoi de neuf en morphologie? sous la direction de Bernard Fradin et Françoise Kerleroux. pp. 51-77