Contributions of diachrony to the teaching of lexical morphology in the Secondary Education

Due to its importance in improving students' communicative competence, Lexical Morphology, i.e., the knowledge of the internal structure of words as well as their formation processes, is taken as part of the curriculum content of the subject "Spanish Language and Literature". In this paper, we discuss the viability of including certain diachronic concepts and processes in the teaching of Lexical Morphology during Secondary Education. Despite the assumption that the analysis of the morphological structure of complex words, as well as the relationships between their constituents and the word formation processes should have a synchronic major focus for the duration of Secondary Education, in this paper the application of diachrony will be proven not only useful for increasing the explanatory and descriptive power of synchronic means, but also capable of providing teachers with solid arguments enabling students to reflect on current linguistic phenomena, which, after all, are results of historical evolution.