Diminutives and Augmentatives in Translation: An Exploratory Systemic-Functional Study of Dubravka Ugrešić’s Novel Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory cross-linguistic study of the semantic domain of diminution and augmentation. Drawing on Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL), it investigates how meanings of smallness and largeness—realised through morphological and lexical resources such as diminutives and augmentatives—operate in narrative discourse. The study focuses on Dubravka Ugrešić’s Baba Jaga je snijela jaje, more specifically the first part of the novel, which is characterised by the narrator’s extensive use of expressions of diminution to depict her mother’s personality and behaviour. These include both the narrator’s evaluative stance and her representation of her mother’s own speech, in which diminutives and augmentatives serve as linguistic markers of frailty, both physical and psychological. We compiled a corpus of 200 sentences retrieved from Part I of the Croatian novel and its translations into Spanish, English, Italian, and Portuguese. Sentences were pasted onto a spreadsheet for manual alignment and identification of expressions of diminution and augmentation in the original and translated samples. First, we carried out a context-level analysis of the original and translated texts. Subsequently, we classified each instance into two categories: (i) diminutive/augmentative translated as diminutive/augmentative, and (ii) diminutive/ augmentative translated as non-diminutive/non-augmentative. We then computed the frequency of each class for each language pair (source–target language). Finally, we analysed the occurrences in terms of typological and registerial constraints and examined the data to identify translation choices potentially ascribable to the translator’s interpretive understanding of the source text. Our findings reveal that each language draws on distinct lexicogrammatical resources to express diminutive and augmentative meanings, with translators’ decisions shaping the representation of character and affect. More broadly, the study demonstrates how an SFL-based approach can illuminate the interplay between linguistic system, translation practice, and meaning-making across typologically diverse languages.