Abstract: Suffixation and Grammatical Gender. The presence in the Spanish language of words like la silla (chair) and el sillón (armchair), el lago (lake) and la laguna (lagoon), la casa (house) and el caserón (mansion) or la corbata (tie) and el corbatín (bow tie), leads us to wonder if the grammatical gender change in these pairs of non-sexed nouns is justified due to a variation in the size of the object – a type traditionally studied as a dimensional genre – or if it is imposed by the suffix that is added to the root in one of the forms, irrespective of whether or not it is a modification based on the dimensions of the object. Under this approach, we will try to address a topic which pivots on flexive morphology and derivational morphology and to which the etymology of each of the analysed forms will have a great deal to contribute in order to draw conclusive results.

Keywords: grammatical gender, suffix, derivational morphology, flexive morphology