@article{guo_2022, 
  title={Guo (2022), Diminutives at word level and root level: -er in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin}, 
  DOI={10.21942/uva.20368155.v4}, 
  abstractNote={Proceedings of the ESSLLI 2022 Student Session Diminutives at word level and root level: -<em>er</em> in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin Yiyang Guo This article investigates the syntactic behaviours of the diminutive marker -<em>er</em> in Colloquial Beijing Mandarin. With -<em>er</em> linearly suffixed to different roots, <em>er</em>-diminutives vary in the compatibility with augmentative modifiers and the requirement of diminutive specification conveyed by additional roots. I propose a threefold analysis: (i) Semantically, -<em>er</em> has two possible functions, viz. restriction and selection. (ii) Syntactically, these two functions are realised at word level and root level, respectively. (iii) The reason why -<em>er</em> can occur at two different levels is that -<em>er</em> is an acategorial particle, lacking a formal feature, so it can merge with words and roots freely.}, 
  publisher={University of Amsterdam / Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences}, 
  author={Guo, Yiyang}, 
  year={2022}, 
  month={Aug}
  }