Abstract
This study reports on an investigation of the productivity of the Dutch diminutive paradigm, which gives rise to five suffixal allomorphs, against the background of Yang’s (2016) Tolerance Principle. It shows how, by studying the frequency of the allomorphs and the environments in which they occur, we can use the Tolerance Principle to determine if a productive rule system can be found for the Dutch diminutives. In doing so, we also describe how we collected the necessary data by setting up a corpus study on Dutch diminutives, including a specific one with data from child directed speech.