‘Compositionality’ in comparative standardology

Resum

Our aim of establishing the theoretical basis for the study of comparative standardology among the Spanish languages makes a revision of the metalanguage used in language standardisation studies a previous and necessary task. As one of the basic notions in the history and comparison of the emergence of the standard languages/varieties is ‘compositionality’, we decided to search for its origins and use among Spanish standardologists. Therefore, this paper begins by presenting the history of the words composicional and composicionalitat in the Catalan corpus language planning and explaining what their origin was in one of Haugen’s (1968) seminal paper. Secondly, it is analysed to what extent this notion has been applied in the Norwegian, the Catalan, the Basque and the Galician standardology. Some concluding remarks are provided in the end, mainly in the sense that compositionality is such a general notion that a lot of different practices can be included in its scope, some of which explained in this paper. On the other hand, a general reflection upon the possibility and desirability to conduct a comparative standardology is provided.