| Summary: | The suffix -ístico is anomalous in Spanish in form because it is formed by three syllables and is proparoxytone. Furthermore, its segmentation can be ambiguous, since it can be described as the result of a root + -ístico, or as a base ending in -ista + -’ico. According to these characteristics of -ístico, this suffix fails to follow the principles established by the Preference Theory of Natural Morphology, specifically two of them: the optimal shape of units and the morphotactic transparency. Because of this, -ístico seems unnatural from this approach. In this paper, I suggest an analysis of -ístico as a result of a combination of a base ending in -ista + -’ico, following the concept of morphological solidarity, which I will define in this paper also (Berniers 1996). These affixes are on a solidary relationship, from which it follows that it is unnecessary to observe a term derived with -ista in the process of using -’ico on it.
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