Gramaticalización y polisemia del sufijo colectivo -iza

Abstract

Suffix -iza, according to the definition of the DLE (s. v.), forms adjectives that designates a propensity towards certain qualities (enfermizo ‘sickly’, rojizo ‘reddish’). In its current uses, the suffix presents aspectual values of quantification with animated entities (chaviza ‘group of kids’), inanimate (papeliza ‘amount of paper’), iterative actions (golpiza ‘beating’) and intense action (gritoniza ‘outrageous scream’). In this paper, we will analyze the grammaticalization of the suffix, which originates in lexical values such as property and quality, going through the designation of jobs and places, up to the current quantifying uses. We conduct concordance searches for this suffix in different sources (CORDE, CREA, CORPES XXI, NGram Viewer), as well as in lexicographic works (DECH, Pharies 2002, etc.) to document the date of appearance of the various semantic values of this affix. In this paper we study the causes of this change and conclude that the suffix has suffered from a grammaticalization process that allows it to currently perform in a more central area of grammar, the aspectual category of quantification.