Denominal derivatives in –ble in modern and contemporary Spanish

Abstract

This paper completes the author’s research on the evolution of a minor word group within Spanish historical morphology and word-formation: the denominal derivatives in -ble. We show that an important change took place from eighteenth century onwards. Whilst in the Middle Ages and the Golden Age, as it was demonstrated in two previous studies, the formation of these lexical units followed some patterns of word-formation inherited from Classical and Post-classical Latin, from the eighteenth century onwards these patterns have been replaced by a more powerful trend: the borrowing of loanwords from other modern languages, especially French and English.