Literary Canon and Phraseology in the Process of Grammatical Coding of Spanish (1492-1770)

Abstract

The classic definition of grammar as a discipline linked to the notion of correctness and use by renowned authors is transferred to the process of grammatical coding of the Spanish language, with various nuances that concern the chronology of the works, but also their objectives. The discrepancy on the possibility of establishing a canon of Castilian authors similar to Latin as the basis of the grammatical norm can be observed, together with its relationship with the parallel resource to Phraseology, in particular to proverbs or phraseological units that are identified within this denomination. This work focuses on the study of these issues in the autochthonous Castilian grammars of the interval between the publication of Nebrija’s Gramatica sobre la lengua castellana (1492), and the period of the eighteenth century prior to the publication of the first Gramatica of the Royal Spanish Academy.