A comparative study of diminutive forms in English and Arabic

الملخص EN

The present research studies the diminutive forms in English and Arabic as far as form, morphological process and parts of speech are concerned.

Further, it sheds some light on the meanings of these forms in English and Arabic.

It has been found that the two languages are similar to some extent with regard to the parts of speech and meanings of these forms.

However, they are drastically different concerning the morphological process involved.

English basically uses suffixation and prefixation while Arabic depends entirely on infixation where some strict patterns that are essentially determined by the morphology of the words to be diminuted are followed.