Abstract
The clitic se in Spanish appears in a number of different constructions, including the reflexive, anticausative and antipassive. It even appears with certain unergative verbs. So far, a unified explanation for the polyfunctionality of se has remained elusive. In this paper, I propose that se functions as a verbalizer (see also Kallulli D, (Non-)canonical passives and reflexives. In Alexiadou A, Schäfer F. Non-canonical passives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 337–358, 2013) in two different domains. When it merges low, it functions to verbalize a nominal element and introduces an external argument. In this instance we see the clitic se in an unergative structure. In the second domain, the clitic merges higher and takes as its complement a Predicate Phrase (PredP) that contains in its specifier the derived position of the internal argument. This PredP semantically does not denote a predicate of events but a predicate of individuals. In this higher position, the clitic (re)verbalizes the structure, taking the predicate of individuals and creating a predicate of events. By creating a predicate of events, the verb can interact with tense and other verbal functional elements in the clause. The polyfunctionality of the clitic se results because of its verbalizing function.
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Notes
- 1.
A reviewer reminds me that it is possible for the argument position to contain a reflexive pronoun along with the clitic, as in the following French sentence from Labelle (2008).
The reviewer suggests that this may pose a problem for the analysis advocated here. However, in Labelle’s (2008) analysis, this overt reflexive pronoun does not saturate the argument position of the verb and considers the possibility that this pronoun “translates as a formula containing a variable” (847). If this pronoun does translate as a variable, then it is another way for the internal argument of the [V refl V ] complex to have its internal argument saturated and meet the bound variable requirement of the internal argument imposed by refl.
- 2.
Kempchinsky (2004) notes that ‘verbs of grooming’ in Spanish behave differently with respect to clitic doubling and omission of se under causative verbs such as hacer; thus it may be the case that these verbs, too, in Spanish also have a different lexical specification.
- 3.
- 4.
Although this construction is often termed the antipassive, this construction is not completely parallel to canonical antipassive structures seen in ergative languages such as Chukchi or Inuit. (For a recent discussion of the antipassive in Inuit, see Spreng 2012.) Like the canonical antipassive, we see an alternation where, with special morphology on the verb, the external argument remains while the internal argument appears as an oblique or is missing entirely. However, unlike these ergative languages, where the antipassive construction is productive, this construction in Spanish is limited to a few lexical items, as noted by Armstrong (2011).
- 5.
A reviewer notes that the reflexive/non-reflexive forms are more related in meaning than what the translations above suggest. The verb despedir means ‘fire’ in the sense of ‘dismiss from a job’. If you dismiss someone, you send them away, which relates to the sense of despedirse de in that when you say goodbye to someone, you are sending them away. We can see the same relatedness with the verb deshacer ‘to take apart’ and its reflexive counterpart. When something is taken apart, each elements is getting away from another element. In the reflexive deshacerse de, the elements are getting away from you or your belongings, which relates to the sense of ‘get rid of’. Even though these two verbs have related senses, they do not have identical senses in every case. We expect as the meanings drift we would get two separate lexical items.
- 6.
A reviewer worries that this analysis is merely descriptively adequate rather than explanatorily adequate, in that the two argument structures are simply listed. However, this ‘antipassive’ construction is lexically limited, so there must be something special with respect to these verbs. My goal here is to explain the appearance of the se clitic and link the appearance of the clitic in this construction with its appearance in other constructions. The explanatory link between the antipassive and the reflexive is that in both cases, the internal argument is introduced in a low position and in a different position than that of the transitive.
- 7.
The Russian construction in (6) above has been likened to the antipassive, in that the agent argument remains while the internal argument is missing when–sja is present. This construction is also termed the ‘absolutive’, and only appears with a limited set of verbs (such as bodat’(sja) ‘to butt’, ljagat’(sja) ‘to kick’). We see the same use of the tko/tku suffix in Chukchi (Kozinsky, Nedjalkov and Polinskaja 1988).
In this case, we can consider that there are two verbs ‘bite’, one which is just a predicate of events and one which is a relation between an event and an entity. However, unlike in the reflexive, the entity argument is not a bound variable. Syntactically, it will be represented as arbitrary PRO.
Interestingly, this construction does not occur in Spanish.
- 8.
A similar situation occurs in Polish (Szczesniak 2006).
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Acknowledgments
I thank the audience at the Workshop on se/si for their questions and suggestions as well as the two anonymous reviewers for further input on this paper. I especially thank Grant Armstrong and Jonathan MacDonald for organizing and hosting the conference as well as for their editorial input. Of course, all errors are my responsibility.
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Basilico, D. (2021). Spanish se as a High and Low Verbalizer. 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_13
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