Plural Diminutives in European Portuguese: Experimental data from a lexical decision task

Evaluatives, found in most natural languages, are considered to be universal, and in recent years, evaluative morphology has garnered considerable interest in linguistic circles (Körtvélyessy, 2014). While there has been substantial research on Portuguese evaluatives, experimental data is sparse. Previous work claimed that the distribution of evaluative and z-evaluative diminutive suffixes in Portuguese depends on the length and thematic class of the base word, as well as familiarity (how frequently the speaker uses the word. Therefore, the present study has two main objectives: (i) to experimentally evaluate the role of the thematic class, based on a lexical decision task (LDT), and (ii) to bridge the gap by contributing experimental data. Additionally, the viability of PsyToolkit as a reliable tool for data collection will be discussed. 

Körtvélyessy, L. (2014). Evaluative Derivation. In R. Lieber & P. Štekauer (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Derivational Morphology(Online, pp. 1–26). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199641642.013.0017