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Part of
Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax
Edited by Miriam Bouzouita, Ioanna Sitaridou and Enrique Pato
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 16] 2018
► pp. 47–74

Chapter 3
The history of concatenative compounds in Spanish

| Texas A & M University
This article analyses Spanish concatenative compounds, whose constituents are of the same lexical category and structural hierarchy (e.g., rojinegro ‘red-black’), focusing in particular on the evolution of their formal features. The first issue considered is the relative frequency of various structural configurations, namely, overt coordination ([XconjX]), linking vowel -i- ([XiX]), and juxtaposition ([XX]). The second issue is whether the linking vowel -i- is etymologically related to coordination. I propose that linking vowels can better be analysed as stem markers, distinguishing full lexemes from combining stems. Support for this proposal comes from the fact that the linking vowel was attested earlier in head-final compounds (barbirrapado ‘beardless’, lit. ‘beard-shaven’), where it generalised before spreading to concatenatives.
Keywords: concatenative compounds, linking vowel, stem marker, binomial, Spanish, Morphology
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Concatenative compounding in historical perspective
    • 2.2The Latin origins of the linking vowel -i-
  • 3.Concatenative compounding in Spanish
    • 3.1Types of concatenative compounds
    • 3.2History of concatenative compounds in Spanish
  • 4.Methodology: Sources, data collection, classification and quantification
  • 5.Findings
    • 5.1Frequency of structural patterns in Spanish concatenative compounds
    • 5.2Structural variability of concatenative compounds
    • 5.3Historical relationship between concatenative compound variants
  • 6.An alternative hypothesis
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 17 July 2018
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.16.03moy
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Cited by one other publication

Torres Cacoullos, Rena & Joseph Bauman
2018. Chapter 9. Allative to purposive grammaticalisation. In Studies in Historical Ibero-Romance Morpho-Syntax [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 16], ► pp. 195 ff. DOI logo

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