O pewnym sposobie użycia form deminutywnych w języku rosyjskim XVII – początku XVIII wieku

On a certain way of using diminutive forms in 17th – early 18th century Russian. The author discusses suffixal appellative diminutive personal nouns which appeared in the etiquette formulations of Russian private correspondence dating from the 17th – early 18th century. The definition of the diminutives has been presented, with particular attention paid to the modification of the meaning of derivatives by isolating the suffixes in their structure. The same diminutive, when used to describe people, can have both a hypocoristic and a contemptuous meaning. Hypocoristic names, as a rule, define the recipient and his/her family members, while the contemptuous names describe the sender and their relatives. The most common suffixes are: -ка/-ко, -ок/-ек, -ишка/-ишко, -ушка/-ушко, -ошка, -онка, -ец, -ица. The history of the type of derivatives with the suffix -ишк- is particularly interesting. Keywords: diminutive noun, hypocoristic noun, suffix, derivative, appellative noun, epistolary etiquette, private correspondence