Compounding is the morphological operation that—in general—puts together two free forms and gives rise to a new word. The importance of compounding stems from the fact that there are probably no languages without compounding, and in some languages (e.g., Chinese) it is the major source of new word formation. Compounds are particularly interesting linguistic constructions for a number of reasons. First, they constitute an anomaly among grammatical constructions because they are “words,” but at the same time exhibit a type of “internal syntax.” Compounds, furthermore, represent a contact point between several crucial linguistic and nonlinguistic notions such as syntagmatic and paradigmatic relationships, syntax and morphology, and linguistic knowledge and pragmatic knowledge. As for the relationship between syntax and morphology, it has often been observed that compounds are the morphological constructions that are closest to syntactic constructions, to the extent that there is no general agreement on which component of the grammar is responsible for their formation.

1The main goal of the paper is showing that there are three different kinds of iterative phenomena in languages: phoneme reduplication, not analyzed here, reduplication, and repetition. The phenomena differ on the basis of the grammatical components involved and therefore have very different effects. My work argues that reduplication is first and fore-most a formal phenomenon. It can involve several kinds of meaning, some of which of very iconic origin, but all the meanings get encoded grammatically. Then, phrases can be iterated, as well, and they are candidates for repetition. I take repetition to have an exclusively iconic function, basically with a single meaning: emphasis. No formal aspects are involved here. I insert the preceding generalization in the wider framework of the Parallel Architecture (Jackendoff 1997(Jackendoff , 2002.

This chapter surveys some of the most important issues in Romance compounding. It covers distinctions between compound types; relationship between compounding, juxtaposition, reduplication, and univerbation and issues of transparency and opacity; patterns of productivity; phonetic and phonological effects of compounding. Specific topics dealt with include: heads; Latin and Romance compounds; overview of compounding in Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Sardinian; reduplication; morphological processes of iteration.