This article deals with the variation of diminutive forms in contemporary Standard Dutch. Despite the well-described rules of diminutive formation, there are a number of words that have more than one well-formed diminutive forms in Dutch. The article provides a brief overview of diminutive formation in Dutch, as well as a description of the cases where a word can have more than one grammatical diminutive form. The second part of the article is an account of a corpus-based study examining the words that contain a high vowel in their final (or only) syllables and end in m , n or l . The goal of the study is to examine the behaviour of the diminutive forms of these stems.

This article deals with the variation of diminutive forms in contemporary Standard Dutch. Despite the well-described rules of diminutive formation, there are a number of words that have more than one well-formed diminutive forms in Dutch. The article provides a brief overview of diminutive formation in Dutch, as well as a description of the cases where a word can have more than one grammatical diminutive form. The second part of the article is an account of a corpus-based study examining the words that contain a high vowel in their final (or only) syllables and end in m , n or l . The goal of the study is to examine the behaviour of the diminutive forms of these stems.

This article deals with the variation of diminutive forms in contemporary Standard Dutch. Despite the well-described rules of diminutive formation, there are a number of words that have more than one well-formed diminutive forms in Dutch. The article provides a brief overview of diminutive formation in Dutch, as well as a description of the cases where a word can have more than one grammatical diminutive form. The second part of the article is an account of a corpus-based study examining the words that contain a high vowel in their final (or only) syllables and end in m , n or l . The goal of the study is to examine the behaviour of the diminutive forms of these stems.