1 On a low and a high diminutive: Evidence from Italian and Hebrew Marijke De Belder Noam Faust Nicola Lampitelli 1. Introduction Cross-linguistically, diminutives display mixed behavior with respect to meaning. To illustrate, take the Italian examples below. Example (1) shows a diminutive with a compositional meaning; examples (2)-(4), on the other hand, have non-compositional meanings. 1 1) nas-ino [Italian] nose.DIM ‘small nose’ 2) pan-ino bread.DIM ‘sandwich’ 3) cas-ino 2 house.DIM ‘brothel’ 4) telefon-ino telephone.DIM ‘cell phone’ Whereas the combination n+DIM in (1) simply refers to a smaller version of what the noun denotes, in (2)-(4) the diminutive morpheme derives a new denotation. As a result, (1) cannot be combined with an augmentative morpheme, because a concept cannot be small and big at the same time, as can be seen in (5). The diminutives in (2)-(4), in contrast, freely combine with an augmentative. This is illustrated in (6). 5) *nas-in-one [Italian] nose-DIM-AUG 6) pan-in-one bread- DIM-AUG ‘big sandwich’ The data above argue for two types of diminutivization: compositional and non- compositional diminutives. 1 We take compositionality and non-compositionality to be the equivalent of “semantic predictability” and “semantic unpredictability”, respectively. Cf. Bertinetto (1995) for a slightly different use of these terms in morphology. 2 Cf. Pianigiani (1926).