Elisa Mattiello, Veronika Ritt-Benmimoun, Wolfgang U. Dressler, “Asymmetric use of diminutives and hypocoristics to pet animals in Italian, German, English, and Arabic,” Language & Communication, Volume 76, 2021, Pages 136-153, ISSN 0271-5309, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2020.11.004. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0271530920301063)

I love this study. Chock full of fun and fascinating findings:

Everybody uses cutesy names more often when speaking to than about their pets. People also use cutesy names more often to express sympathy for or empathy with their pets, especially when sick or injured.

Italians have an insane amount of diminutive affixes. SO MANY productive diminutive suffixes: “-ino, -etto, -ello, -uccio/-uzzo, -otto, less productive -olo, -onzolo, -atto, interfixed -ar/er/ic ello, -ic ino, for verbs -ett/-ott/-ell/-onzol and -acchi/-icchi/-ucchi/-occhi/-azz   -are” There are apparently a few that are used in special ways online: “vip(p) ino/ etto/ uccio/ a/er ello.”

Italians regularly put sweaters and jackets on dogs and sometimes cats, and they call those sweaters/jackets by cutesy names. Arabic speakers in the study found the idea of putting jackets on pets ridiculous. Most don’t let their pets in the house, only the garden; one Tunisian said he intentionally keeps his dog at a distance to keep him “evil.”

Female speakers use cutesy names more often than male speakers, and both use cutesy names more often for female than male pets.

The study reports an Italian vet who used the term “patatina” when about to examine a female dog’s lady bits, which taught me that Italians use the word “potato” to mean “female genitalia.”

There’s an official Austrian “pick up your dog’s shit” sign that reads “Ein Sackerl für mein Gackerl!” That is, “a little sack for my little shit.” I can’t stop saying it.

Germans use diminutives for kid vomit but not for pet vomit.

Tunisian Arabic uses a productive morphological pattern for forming diminutives, adding consonants/vowels in the middle of a word in a regular way and changing its ending to match; the other three languages use mostly suffixes.

English is the only one of the three languages with heavy use of a cutesy pet verb - which you won’t be surprised by if you’ve ever taken a doggie out for walkies.