ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of the development of the most productive prefix patterns in the history of Spanish. It focuses on the evolution of verbal prefixation, and examines nominal and adjectival prefixation. In the transition from Latin to the Romance languages, there was a reduction in the number of prefixes and their use. According to Montero Curiel, the most frequent prefixes in the earliest Spanish texts are a-, en-, des-, re- and con-. According to Iacobini, in Romance languages, prefixes forming nouns and adjectives usually present spatial, evaluative, negative, reflexive and reciprocal values. The chapter illustrates the origin and development of each of these categories in the history of Spanish, based on specific examples. Evaluative prefixes express qualifying or quantifying meanings which can be interpreted according to a scale of values. Spanish has a considerable number of prefixes with an evaluative meaning. Two of them are: sub- and medio-.
