ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the evolution of compounding patterns in Spanish. It presents the conceptual and temporal bounds of the process by defining the patterns considered, delimiting the timeframe, and discussing methodological and theoretical issues. The chapter provides an overview of the main compounding trends and traces their evolution in terms of frequency, productivity, and structural changes. It then examines the relative stability of compounding over time, both in terms of constituents and output lexical categories. Over history, the study of Spanish compounding has focused most often on its synchronic aspects. In fact, the same could be said of compounding generally: diachronic accounts tend to be the exception rather than the rule. Spanish historical dictionaries vary greatly in terms of their stylistic and temporal coverage and in their reliability. One feature that distinguishes compounds from simplex words is that their complex origin may in fact impose constraints to their semantic shifts.
