A Study of Evaluative Morphology in Naxi
This article examines evaluative morphology in the Naxi language from the framework of evaluative morphology studies, describing the forms, distribution, and grammatical and pragmatic functions of markers that express speakers' subjective evaluation. It shows that evaluative morphology in Naxi is highly salient and extends well beyond verbs to nouns, adjectives, classifiers, and onomatopoeic words, interacting closely with adverbs and with isolating and bound morphemes, and sharing a rule system with derivational and inflectional morphology. The principal formal devices are proclitics (chiefly the a-syllable and its phonetic variants), reduplication, and suffixes such as the diminutive -zo33 and the augmentative -me33, with the richest expression occurring in four-syllable constructions. These markers convey both augmentation and diminution; pejorative meanings predominate, though praise and honorific meanings also occur, illustrated with comparative data from Kazhuo, Lisu, Yi, and Bai.
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