Spanish has left‐headed compounds which are not as productive as their left‐headed counterparts in other languages. This presence or absence of productivity has been attributed to a binary parameter according to which N‐N compounding, as opposed to nominal constructions in which the head noun takes a complement as in ‘the destruction of the city’, would be the superset or marked option. Furthermore, the idiosyncratic nature of Spanish N‐N compounding has been attributed to the make‐up of Spanish Nouns. Specifically, it has been proposed that Spanish Nouns have a ‘word marker’ which triggers L1 acquisition of these constructions. Based on the results of two picture tests intended to elicit actual command of N‐N compounding strategies, as well as word order patterns and gender marking patterns, we argue that: 1) N‐N compounding is not a marked construction; 2) adult L2 acquisition of Spanish N‐N compounds is triggered by head directionality (a processing trigger) rather than by the ‘word marker’ (a representational trigger) which is supposed to trigger L1 acquisition of these compounds.