| Affix function | number of borrowed affixes |
|---|---|
Information and examples mainly from Borg (1985: 125–126) and Kossmann (2008; 2011) (see also Newton 1964; Tsiapera 1964: 125–126; Roth 1979; Roth 2003). Kormakiti, i.e. Arabic spoken on Cyprus, has very many Greek loanwords which retain their Greek morphology, but relatively little Greek morphology is used on native Arabic stems, with one major exception: a set of suffixes marking diminutive, which is further specified for gender and number. These are productively used on Arabic nouns.
1 diminutive marker and 4 gender/number marking suffixes
‑u ‘diminutive’
‑i ‘masculine singular’
‑kkya ‘masculine plural’
‑a ‘feminine singular’
‑úes ‘feminine plural’
Examples of hybrids: payt‑u‑i ‘little house’, payt‑u‑kkya ‘little houses’ (from payt ‘house’ (masc.)), mišl‑u‑a ‘little ladle’, mišl‑u‑es ‘little ladles’ (from mišl‑e ‘ladle’ (fem.)).