The gravitational pull hypothesis and the translation of formal and semantic diminutives into Catalan: a study based on the COVALT corpus

This chapter aims to test the Gravitational Pull Hypothesis in relation to two types of diminutives – formal, that is, diminutive suffixes, and semantic, such as ‘adjective + noun’ – and their translation into Catalan from English and French. It draws on a previous study of the translation of diminutives into Spanish (Tello, under review), the relevant COVALT components, translation tasks carried out by professional translators, and data from reference books. In line with the previous study, the Catalan formal diminutive - et is found to be salient in comparison with other formal diminutives and with semantic diminutives in this language. By contrast, semantic diminutives are overwhelmingly salient in EN and FR. Translation tasks show that connectivity between semantic diminutives in the source languages and formal diminutives in Catalan is high (over 70 %) in both language combinations. On the basis of this evidence, two alternative translational effects are hypothesised. On the one hand, Catalan formal diminutives will be overrepresented in EN- CA and FR- CA if magnetism and connectivity prevail; on the other, they will be underrepresented if semantic diminutives are activated, that is, if gravitational pull prevails. Consequently, Catalan semantic diminutives will tend to be overrepresented, especially in FR- CA, due to the formal similarity of the semantic diminutive structure ‘petit + noun’ in both languages. The results of the analysis of the translated components in COVALT confirm the second hypothesis. This may be largely due to the fact that connectivity between EN and FR semantic diminutives and CA semantic diminutives is higher than connectivity between semantic diminutives in EN and FR and formal diminutives in CA. This contradicts the results of the translation tasks.