On the headship status of Greek diminutive suffixes: a view from lexical semantics

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to comment on the headship status of evaluative affixes and, second, to propose a lexical-semantic approach to evaluative morphology with a focus on Greek diminutives. The proposed analysis militates against the idea that the derivation vs. inflection distinction should be identified with the head-nonhead asymmetry and, as a result, it cannot be maintained that the derivational status of Greek diminutives should render these affixes heads of their formations. As far as lexical semantics is concerned, the analysis allows one to elaborate upon the differences between the mechanisms of subordination of functions with and without indexation of arguments. Keywords: head, inflection vs. derivation, evaluative morphology, lexical semantics