The history of concatenative compounds in Spanish
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abstract
2018 John Benjamins Publishing Company. 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.
