Comparison of diminutives in Russian and Chinese languages against the background of linguistic typology

The article deals with the detailed analysis of the diminutives in Russian and Chinese languages on the basis of linguistic typology. There are described the phonetic and morphological means of expression and there are compared the functions of diminutives in Russian and Chinese languages. Although there are differences of these languages the comparison of the formal expression and the functions of the Russian and Chinese diminutives demonstrates that the semantic extension of the diminutive basically corresponds to the linguistic universal.