Los Sufijos Aumentativos Y Peyorativos En El Espanol Medieval. (Spanish Text).

Abstract

Through the use of diminutive, augmentative and pejorative suffixes, the native speaker of Spanish is able to express multiple meanings, ideas, and feelings. The richness of the Spanish language lies precisely in its power to derive new terms by adding these suffixes, which are generally not recognized as separate words. Spanish diminutive suffixation has been well studied in the past. Here the focus is the augmentative/pejorative range. Most of the suffixes used during the Medieval period as augment- ative and /or pejoratives were indeed inherited from Latin, but what is interesting is that in Latin they had very different meanings from the ones they show in Medieval Spanish and today. Therefore, this study has undertaken to analyze the factors which may have contributed to the semantic change in this suffixes. Literary and non-literary Medieval texts were examined in search of examples of the use of the group of suffixes selected for this study (-aco, -acho, -ajo and -aja, -al, -alla, -arro, -astro, -azo, -ejo, -iento, -on, -ote, -uco, -ucho, -udo, -uzo). A corpus of the occurrences is presented in Chapter 4. The study continues with a review of scholarly positions on the formal and functional evolution of each suffix. The corpus is analyzed according to phonetic, euphonic, and semantic criteria. Phonological distribution, vocalic gamuts, and sound symbolism are discussed, together with the types of base to which the suffixes are added and their competition with other suffixes. When the attestations of each suffix have been examined and analyzed for the criteria mentioned above, it is concluded that several factors, both phonetic and semantic, have interacted to produce this semantic change.