Las alternancias asistemáticas de número y género en los compuestos españoles: Una frontera incierta entre morfología y sintaxis

Abstract

This paper considers the number and gender variants found in three types of Spanish compounds: batefuego(s), aviones espía(s), and educación afectivo/afectiva-sexual. Research was conducted using a self-compiled sample of 353 compounds. Inner inflection is used traditionally as a criterion of phrasehood. However, the data reveal that alternations occur unsystematically, often affecting the same compound without changing its meaning, which makes it difficult to consider it a product of morphological rules in one case and a syntactic construction in another. It is concluded that the existence of alternations in the realization of gender and number must have a place in the synchronic description of Spanish compounding.

Keywords

• compound
• morphology
• variation
• number
• gender