Dairwueh: Is the Diminutive a Derivative Form?

In most of the Dairwueh dialects, the answer to this is clearly affirmative. However, in some dialects in geographical proximity to Bryatesle, a development has occurred.

Bryatesle as noted has a dual case system, with primary and secondary cases stacking on top of each other. The primary and secondary cases are two disjunct sets, so you don't get things like "double accusative" or "accusative dative". You do, however, get things like "accusative partitive" or "dative secondary subject" and the like.

Dairwueh dialects in close contact with Bryatesle have started to acquire traits along the lines of the dual case system of Bryatesle. Let us compare the typical case systems of the two languages:

Dairwueh: nominative accusative dative genitive loc-instr

 This very straightforward system contrasts with the Bryatesle system of

{nominative, accusative, dative, ablative} *
{ definite, possessum, secondary subject, reciprocal object, negative agreement, partitive, suggestion marking}

 However, not all the elements of the product of these two are permitted, and many elements are merged - for many forms, the dative and ablative are not distinguished, for instance.

Generally speaking, the Dairwueh reliance on the genitive to mark possession has not been weakened in any dialects. Some extent of double marking can be found in a few dialects, where the possessum generally gets a somewhat simplified morphology: accusative throughout. Secondary subject and reciprocal object-like markings are slowly appear. Generally speaking, the lexemes that correspond to "themselves", "each other" and so on are getting more syntactically bound than in mainstream Dairwueh and they have also migrated to somewhat unusual positions.

Definiteness is more often marked by determiners than in mainstream Dairwueh, but this has not taken on any case-like behavior at all.

Negative agreement does appear through semantically bleached negative indefinite determiners. These are far from mandatory, and more clearly not syntactically bound just yet. 

The peculiar thing, though, is the partitive: these dialects reuse the diminutive as a partitive case. This also reverses the order of the morphemes with respect to the order in Bryatesle. It also makes the diminutive in these dialects somewhat odd: it has properties more akin to derivative morphology, and properties more akin to inflectional morphology.