ON CATEGORIZING NOUN DIMINUTIVES IN GERMAN (Substantivische Diminutiva im Deutschen: Versuch einer Kategorisierung)

The present paper deals with noun diminutives in German and aims at attempting to categorize them. The author shows that noun diminutives, although the difference between them and the non-diminutives is a strictly quantitative one, nevertheless constitute a lexical category. It could be proven that the question whether a lingual entity belongs to vocabulary or grammar does not depend on the underlying mechanism of formation and that the qualitative character of an item or a word formation does not decide on its lexicality.