Usos y funciones de los sufijos apreciativos en el habla coloquial de jóvenes universitarios de Caracas

When communicating, human beings interchange information, emotions, appraisal on the world, and do things with language (Austin 1962; Searle 1969, Escandell 1993; Calsamiglia & Tusón 1999). There are a series of specialized linguistic mechanisms, among which appreciative morphemes are found (diminutive, augmentative, and pejorative morphemes). The objective of this preliminary study was first to analyze appreciative suffixes found in oral production of university students from the Universidad Central de Venezuela, and secondly, to determine uses and/or functions of these suffixes in interactions, and use frequency. A corpus of six natural and spontaneous conversations was used (Martínez Lara 2006). The results show that the most frequent appreciative suffixes are:-ito/a,-ico/a, ísimo/a, ón, and-ota. Discourse functions are (i) to point out referent size and/or volume; (ii) to express positive or negative appraisal; (iii) to put stress on the word; (iv) to give emphasis; and (v) to demand attention from the interlocutor.