From Pagan Temple to Pagan Noise, from Murder Cries to Murder Cries. Origin and Development of nominal Augmentatives in German

This paper studies the emergence and change of nominal augmentatives in German from 1600 to 1925. For this purpose, the augmentatives Affe- 'ape', Mord(s)- 'murder', Heide'pagan', Holle- 'hell' and Riese- 'giant' are examined in the German Text Archive (,Deutsches Textarchiv"). It is evident that the change in word formation is favored by various factors, of which persistence, i. e., the semantic relationship to the lexical source, is decisive for the degree of augmentative productivity. The word formation change can also be advanced through individual starting words, through the serial formation in word fields, through the semantic suitability of the lexical source and through a polyvalent use of augmentatives. The factors mentioned have different effects on the lexemes examined, which is why different scenarios for the emergence and development of a specific augmentative are assumed. Finally, the present findings are embedded in theoretically interesting questions concerning the graduality of word formation changes, the operationalization of polysemic relations and the affixoid status of word formation units.