The present paper deals with noun diminutives in German and aims at attempting to categorize them. The author shows that noun diminutives, although the difference between them and the non-diminutives is a strictly quantitative one, nevertheless constitute a lexical category. It could be proven that the question whether a lingual entity belongs to vocabulary or grammar does not depend on the underlying mechanism of formation and that the qualitative character of an item or a word formation does not decide on its lexicality.
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