I don’t often write about politics and linguistics together, and I suppose this post is no exception. But it’s a linguistics post with a political hook, because it starts off with me listening to the beautiful song “Nicaragua, Nicaragüita“, by Carlos Mejía Godoy. I noticed something odd in this line:

… sos más dulcita que la mielita de Tamagás …

What’s odd is the word mielita (“little honey”). This word seems to go against a strong generalization about how we form diminutives in Spanish: nouns that end in -o or -a add -it: gato ~ gatito, casa ~ casita. Words that end in other vowels, or consonants, take -cito or -cita: madre ~ madrecita, ratón ~ ratoncito, amor ~ amorcito.

We have a whole theoretical linguistic account of why this happens, which is supposed to show us something about the relationships between words, and how the basic forms constrain more complicated forms, etc. I don’t think it’s totally convincing, and anyway it doesn’t explain the behavior of words like madrecita, which I think should be treated as similar to French liaison.

But, apparently, the generalization that we’ve tried to analyze isn’t even correct. Google confirms that the standard word is mielita (16k hits) and not mielcita (1k). The same pattern holds for every other l-final word that I can think of: animalito (428k) vs. animalcito (115); puñalito (1k) vs. puñalcito (48); señalita (376) vs. señalcita, and so on.

I don’t have anything particularly compelling to say about this fact, but I think it’s interesting and I haven’t heard anyone mention it before. Spanish speakers, am I right that all l-final words take ito/ita rather than cito/cita? Any idea why? Linguists, thoughts?

May 26th, 2007 | Category: linguistics, music | Subscribe to comments | You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed