Some features, which, in the author's mind, are constant in the so called "traditional" model of grammar analysis developed in the West before approximately 1830 are presented here. It is insinuated how those theoretical principles hindered, in general, the perception of the "unitary sets" of words and, concretely, of those which could be called "prepositional compounds". It is offered a relatively detailed analysis of the treatments which, throughout the Spanish grammatical tradition (1492-1895), have been proposed for a certain type of "prepositional compound", Le., the one represented by the model NOMINAL ADVERB + DE (delante de, cerca de, encima de, ...): how it is analysed, which are its compounding elements, how are these categorised. It is outlined which may have been the categorical and epistemic sequence of such treatments.