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This study is a socio-historical approach to affix productivity as shown in the printed edition of the Siete Partidas (1491). A comparison of this edition and its manuscript tradition (thirteenth-fifteenth centuries), underscores numerous modifications that cannot be explained under the traditional view as mere substitutions to facilitate comprehension. The study argues that, in addition to the linguistic modernization one might expect, the editorial intervention illustrates practices typically found in the process of standardization: the suppression of variants actively used at the time of the printing (aparecimiento/aparición; agravamiento/agravio) and a preference for (re-)latinized derivations (enfamar/infamar; descomulgamiento/excomunión). Sixteenthcentury documentation provides further evidence of the standardization practices proposed in this study in the development of social attitudes towards some the variants discussed in the article. The study considers the implications the sociohistorical approach offers for descriptions of affixation at the turn of the fifteenth century in particular and the history of Spanish in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]