Abstract
This paper offers a novel analysis of the Spanish light verbs poner(se) ‘to become’ and quedar(se) ‘to become/stay’ in combination with adjectives. These verbs have the peculiarity that they may appear with or without se in these constructions, with clear effects on argument structure and thematic and aspectual interpretation. I propose a unified formal analysis that takes event complexity and argument coindexing as the common denominator of se in these complex predicates. I further observe that these effects with se are not exclusive to these light verbs, but can also be observed in certain types of lexical verbs, strongly suggesting that both lexical and light verbs lexicalize the same eventive spine.
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Notes
- 1.
There are two other light verbs denoting change in Spanish, volver(se) and hacer(se) ‘to become’. The received wisdom is that these two verbs take Individual-level adjectives, whereas poner(se) and quedar(se) take Stage-level adjectives. See Demonte and Masullo (1999) and Morimoto and Pavón-Lucero (2007) for further discussion of these four verbs.
- 2.
The term light verb was originally coined by Jespersen (1965). In Jespersen’s view, which I adopt here, a lexical verb is a conceptually rich verb that has meaning in isolation and belongs to the open class type of lexical items. Light verbs, on the other hand, belong to the closed (i.e. grammatical) class of lexical items and they are parasitic on a lexical predicate to form a syntactically and semantically coherent (complex) predicate.
- 3.
In this respect, my work takes the stance that the so-called unaccusative se signals both reflexivity and aspectual complexity. As far as the reflexivity analysis is concerned—technical differences aside—I side with Chierchia (2004) and Koontz-Garboden (2009). In terms of the aspectual complexity of se, the reader is referred to Vivanco (this volume) and the overview therein.
- 4.
For reasons of space, I will restrict my study of these light verbs to adjectival predicates. However, poner(se) and quedar(se) can also appear with other non-verbal predicates, such as PPs. Moreover, while many adjectives can take poner(se) and quedar(se) with equal ease, other adjectives can only combine with either one or the other (e.g. gordo ‘fat’ can only appear with poner(se) and débil ‘weak’ can only take quedar(se)). Focusing on these restrictions in depth goes beyond the scope of this work, but see Bybee and Eddington (2006) and Morimoto and Pavón-Lucero (2007) for discussion.
- 5.
As Morimoto and Pavón-Lucero (2007) observe, there is also a counter-expectational presupposition involved with quedar(se). As such, it is odd to say, without further context, Se quedó despierto toda la mañana ‘He stayed awake all morning’, since the expectation is that one is typically awake in the morning.
- 6.
The reader may wonder why a change-of-state reading is precluded in (3c). It is due to the selectional restrictions of change-of-state quedar(se) (see also ft. 4), which cannot take the adjective despierto.
- 7.
- 8.
An anonymous reviewer asks how the spell-out of se is restricted, given that it is not the case that all coindexed arguments trigger se. The reviewer points out the case of coindexed direct and indirect arguments (see (i), from Otero 1999:1462).
A plausible solution would be to stipulate that ApplP cannot host reflexive morphology, under the assumption that the two internal arguments of ditransitive verbs are introduced by a low ApplP complement of V (Pylkkänen 2002). I leave aside this issue for future work.
- 9.
The adverb casi ‘almost’ does not always deliver a clear ambiguity with these light verbs, as an anonymous reviewer rightly notes. This happens mostly when they select adjectives denoting psychological states. What is more, this adverb sounds weird with psychological predicates to begin with (e.g. (2)). A likely explanation is that it is hard to see how a psychological (change-of-)state would be compatible with any of the possible readings delivered by casi, i.e. how can one assess the degree to which a person can be said to be close to be nervous (i.e. with casi scoping below the process event and above the result state)? Or how can one assess whether the whole event of a person being or becoming nervous could have almost begun (i.e. with casi scoping over the whole event)?
- 10.
It seems that the link between agentivity and se is indeed restricted to the stative version of quedarse. While stative quedarse is clearly agentive (e.g. (iiia), and see also (5) and (6)), change-of-state quedarse does not seem to be (e.g. (iiib)). This is not surprising, given that change-of-state quedarse does not include initP in its decomposition.
- 11.
A reviewer points out that it is possible to have a reflexive stative verb (i.e. with se) and a participial complement, as in (iv) (example from the reviewer).
While I agree this would be a potential counterexample for my theory, I note that the structure in (41b) is rather exceptional: there are very few inherently reflexive verbs that can take a passive participal complement whose internal argument is coindexed with the subject of such verb. Only sentirse ‘feel’ and considerarse ‘consider oneself’ come to mind. I leave aside a deeper study of the role of se in these specific constructions for future work.
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the audiences of the Workshop on Romance se-si, where a previous version of this work was presented, for their constructive feedback. I also thank two anonymous reviewers and María Luisa Zubizarreta for the extensive discussions I had with her on this topic. Last but not least, thank you to Grant Armstrong and Jon MacDonald for organizing the workshop and for the relentless effort they have put in making this volume a reality. Errors are my own.
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García-Pardo, A. (2021). Light Verbs and the Syntactic Configurations of se. In: Armstrong, G., MacDonald, J.E. (eds) Unraveling the complexity of SE. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 99. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57004-0_10
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