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The Spanish reflexive clitic se as an aspectual class marker
Abstract
This article proposes that the Spanish reflexive clitic se used in certain transitive construction is a marker of a class of situations that are quantitatively delimited. This class of situations includes both events and states; the quantitative delimitedness they express is akin to but not restricted to the notion of TELICITY (cf. Garey 1957). The paper proceeds as follows: First, I identify the use of se (SE(q), henceforth) that does not fit in the traditional classification. After previous literature is reviewed, I show that all sentences with SE(q) share one common property: they must contain a quantitatively delimited direct object. Upon explicating how the (object) NP denotation and the VP denotation correlate in transitive sentences, I propose that sentences with SE(q) are intended to express quantitatively delimited situations in time or in space, and that SE(q) is an overt marker of such situations. The findings of this study have two important implications. First, previous analyses commonly treat the Romance clitic se/si as a ''valency-reducing'' morpheme (cf. Wehrli 1986; and others); such a theory is not general enough to accommodate SE(q). Second, the analogy between the NP denotation and the VP denotation has long been recognized in event semantics. The present study demonstrates that this semantic correlation holds not only for dynamic situations but also for states.
... Sin embargo, existe otro uso del se que es diferente a los usos anteriores y que plantea problemas teóricos a la idea de un se único. Este uso particular del pronombre ha sido referido en la literatura como se aspectual (De Miguel y Fernández de Lagunilla, 2000;Nishida, 1994;Sánchez López, 2002;Sanz y Laka, 2002, Zagona, 1996, se transitivo (Clements, 2006), se medio/ se de explotación (Maldonado, 1999), dativo reflexivo de interés (Alarcos Llorach 1968;D'Introno et al., 2007) dativo ético (Gili Gaya, 1960) por mencionar sólo algunos. A pesar de las diferencias entre los enfoques, en su mayoría coinciden en que los argumentos de sujeto y objeto son referencialmente independientes: ...
... Este uso particular de se ha sido referido en la literatura como se aspectual (De Miguel y Fernández de Lagunilla, 2000;Nishida, 1994;Sanz y Laka 2002y Zagona, 1996, se transitivo (Clements, 2006;Rivas, 2011), se medio o se de explotación (Maldonado, 1999(Maldonado, , 2000, dativo de interés (Alarcos Llorach, 1968;D'Introno et al., 2007) dativo ético (Gili Gaya, 1960) por mencionar algunos. A pesar de la extensa bibliografía sobre el se en español, no existe hasta el momento un consenso en su caracterización, especialmente en sus valores semántico-pragmáticos o en los factores que determinan el uso de una u otra forma. ...
... Hopper y Thompson, 1980) así como por el aspecto perfectivo, aunque cabe mencionar que fueron los predicados perfectivos los que más favorecieron la marcación (.61), seguidos por las formas perfectivas (.55), el presente perfecto (.51) y finalmente las formas imperfectivas (.47) desfavorecieron la marcación. Estos resultados también corroboran que los predicados de ingestión marcados con se se asocian con los valores de transitividad alta, como lo habían sugerido Maldonado (2000), Clements (2006) y Rivas (2011), así como con un valor aspectual como lo han propuesto De Miguel y Fernández de Lagunilla (2000), Nishida (1994) Sanz y Laka (2002) y Zagona (1996), entre otros. ...
The transitive forms of the Spanish verbs eat (comer) and drink (tomar and beber), variably occur with the clitic se and all forms of its paradigm (me, te, se, nos, os). This study shows, based on a variationist analysis, that the presence of clitic is highly associated with pragmatic values of subjectivity, in particular with the marking of the speaker's counter-expectations. The work shows how the The work shows how the marked forms tend to occur in contexts tend to occur in contexts in which there is some unexpected situation or contrary to the norms, whose marking can be identified from the presence of non-prototypical subject-agents, objetcs, or from ingestion events that deviate or from ingestion events that deviate from social or cultural conventions.
... Se ha observado (Sánchez López, 2002, basándose en trabajos previos) que la presencia de este clítico impone un requisito semántico, ya que los argumentos internos deben ser delimitados, como se ve en (5). Distintas nociones se han propuesto para definir esta propiedad: definitud (Arce-Arenales, 1989), referencialidad (Nishida, 1994) y especificidad (Rigau, 1994) ...
... Sin embargo, se han presentado distintas nociones para explicar el comportamiento semántico-sintáctico del clítico. Para algunos (Sanz y Laka, 2002) es la telicidad del predicado lo que licencia su presencia, mientras que otros (De Miguel y Fernández Lagunilla, 2000) señalan que el clítico marca la culminación del evento, o que es un indicador de la delimitación del objeto (Nishida, 1994). Estas propuestas comparten la predicción de que solo ciertos predicados aceptan la presencia del clítico, generalmente los predicados de la clase léxica de las realizaciones (Vendler, 1967), que constituyen eventos télicos, dinámicos y durativos. ...
... Estos análisis consideran que el clítico se relaciona más directamente con el dominio verbal, incluido en los alcances de los sintagmas verbales (Sv o SV según el modelo). En este grupo se encuentran la mayoría de los estudios sobre el se aspectual y otros fenómenos similares, entre los que podemos mencionar a Nishida (1994), Zagona (1996), Folli y Harley (2005), Basilico (2010), MacDonald (2004MacDonald ( , 2008aMacDonald ( , 2008bMacDonald ( , 2017, Campanini y Schäfer (2011). Dentro de los análisis bajos también se encuentra la propuesta de Armstrong (2013), que detallamos en la siguiente sección y contrastamos con datos del corpus recabado. ...
In this paper we address a corpus of Argentine Spanish data taken from CORPES XXI that exhibits the combination of the aspectual clitic se with the verb saber as in Juan se sabe la lección. Starting with a general characterization of the constructions with this clitic, we take up Armstrong’s (2013) distinction between agentive constructions with reflexive clitic and transitive constructions with reflexive clitic and apply his predictions to the corpus. We note that, while sentences with saberse are close to the transitive constructions, not all the tests apply, so that it is not possible to argue that these constructions operate uniformly.
En este trabajo abordamos un corpus de datos del español de Argentina tomado del CORPES XXI que exhibe la combinación del clítico aspectual se con el verbo saber como en Juan se sabe la lección. A partir de una caracterización general de las construcciones con este clítico, retomamos la distinción de Armstrong (2013) entre construcciones agentivas con clítico reflexivo y construcciones transitivas con clítico reflexivo y aplicamos sus predicciones al corpusrecabado. Observamos que, si bien las oraciones con saberse se acercan a las construcciones transitivas, no todas las pruebas se aplican, de modo que no es posible sostener que estas construcciones operan uniformemente.
... (reflexive/reciprocal se) the children se look 'The children looked at each other.' (Basilico 2010: 272) The main focus of this paper lies in aspectual se in connection to telicity, i.e., constructions with aspectual se involving dynamic (or eventive) and stative (non-dynamic) predicates in connection to telicity. As the literature points out (Nishida 1994;Basilico 2010;Armstrong 2013;MacDonald 2017), aspectual se occurs with transitive predicates. 3 Quite commonly, in the presence of aspectual se, the predicate is telic (Sanz 2000;Sanz & Laka 2002;Basilico 2010;Campanini & Schäfer 2011;MacDonald 2017). ...
... In addition to dynamic predicates as the ones discussed in the previous section, it has also been indicated in the literature that a limited number of stative (non-dynamic) predicates in the domain of knowledge and belief can also appear in constructions with aspectual se (Nishida 1994 (25). In these cases, something or someone is known, as in (25)a-b, or something is believed, as in (25) The analysis of these predicates has raised a debate in the literature as to how they should be characterized. ...
... Specifically, there are two opposing views in this regard. On the one hand, Nishida (1994), Zagona, (1996, Sanz (2000), Sanz & Laka (2002) and Basilico (2010) make the claim that constructions with aspectual se like the ones in (25) are to be understood as eventive (or "inceptive", as Basilico's 2010 puts it; they would be dynamic under the current approach), where the theme argument provides a path such that all of it is known or believed (these predicates would be telic under this view). On the other hand, MacDonald (2017) argues that the predicates in cases such as the ones in (25) actually remain stative (and are thus atelic). ...
This paper addresses aspectual se in Spanish. Building on the previous analyses that have been proposed in the literature to account for constructions with aspectual se that mainly focus on the syntax of these (see, e.g., MacDonald 2017), this paper provides a semantic account that makes explicit (i) why dynamic predicates must be telic in the presence of se, and (ii) why the very same se can appear with a limited number of stative predicates, which are atelic. The account is implemented in Beavers's (2011) Figure/Path Relation model. I propose a maximization strategy that captures that dynamic predicates in constructions with se are always telic by indicating the conditions under which the theme has a fixed quantity and the scale/path that may be associated with the verb is bounded. This maximization strategy is then compared to and distinguished from the event maximization strategies proposed for Slavic languages (Filip 2008) and Hungarian (Kardos 2016), and to the scale/path maximization strategy proposed for Southern Aymara (Martínez Vera 2021a).
... The reason for this wide interest in reflexives is the functional overload that these elements show in many languages, where the reflexive marker (henceforth RM) can not only appear in semantically reflexive constructions but can also act as a reciprocal marker (see, for instance, the studies presented in Nedjalkov [2007]), a middle marker (see, among others, Kemmer [1993]) or even as a passive or impersonal marker (see Siewierska [1984] for a typological account). For a smaller number of languages, an allegedly aspectual function of the RM has also been described (see Cornips and Hulk [1996] for Heerlen Dutch and French, Campanini and Schäfer [2011] for French and Italian), an analysis that has been very successful for some Spanish constructions over the last three decades or so (Basilico 2010;Campanini and Schäfer 2011;De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000;McCready and Nishida 2008;Nishida 1994;Rigau 1994;Sánchez López 2002;Sanz and Laka 2002;Zagona 1996). In this paper, I challenge these claims for an aspectual se in Spanish by identifying some empirical problems that arise in connection with it. ...
... While traditional accounts did not go much further than merely noting these uses (especially with intransitive verbs) and considering the RM an ethical dative, they have received a great deal of attention in the last twenty-five years. Perhaps the most prevalent tendency in modern accounts (especially within the generative framework) is to attribute an aspectual function to the RM (Basilico 2010;Campanini and Schäfer 2011;De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000;McCready and Nishida 2008;Nishida 1994;Rigau 1994;Sánchez López 2002;Sanz and Laka 2002;Zagona 1996, and to some extent MacDonald 2017), although some authors have argued that the presence of the RM in these constructions is (also) related to semantic features of the verbal arguments, such as the agentivity of the subject (Aaron and Torres Cacoullos 2005;Armstrong 2013;De la Mora 2011;Di Tullio 2012;García Fernández 2015;Maldonado 1989Maldonado , 1999Maldonado , 2000Rivas 2011;Torres Cacoullos and Schwenter 2008). In this paper, I will concentrate on the former, the aspectual function. ...
... ate.1SG ten apples and now me duele el estómago. me.DAT hurts the stomach 'I ate ten apples and now my stomach hurts' (Nishida 1994) (Nishida 1994) (2) a. Juan (*se) murió fusilado. Juan REFL.3 died.3SG ...
The goal of this paper is to revisit the so-called aspectual se , frequently cited over the last three decades as a new function of reflexive pronouns in Spanish and other languages, which refers to facultative uses of the reflexive pronoun where it has no effect on the valency or diathesis of the verb. I will focus on four empirical problems that such accounts face when dealing with corpus data: the requirement of a delimited object for transitive verbs, the semantic implications of the aspectual function of the reflexive pronoun, the unacceptability of the reflexive pronoun with some predicates, and the fact that these accounts have ignored a number of predicates that also take this facultative reflexive pronoun. I argue that a larger sample of both contexts and verbs, obtained by exhaustively analyzing corpus data, is necessary to improve our understanding of these uses.
... Unlike PCC and Icelandic phenomena, however, Spa QPRs await precise analyses. In this paper, I adopt Distributed Morphology (DM) (Bonet 1991, Halle and Marantz 1993, 1994, Harley and Noyer 1999, Marantz 1997, and I argue that QPRs are best captured in postsyntactic morphology via features in adjacent clitics. My proposals on QPRs, then, share the spirit of Bonet's PCC. ...
... QPRs, then, cannot be due to blocking effects between number, person in/around finite T (or alternative heads) and nominative arguments, the core idea behind proposals for Icelandic. Regarding intervention, we could adopt Stepanov's approach, considering Spa reflexive clitics aspectual markers (Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, Sanz 1999 Fernández Lagunilla 2000, among others; D'Alessandro 2004 on Italian). As aspectual markers, reflexives clitics could head Aspect in (21), and interrupt the needed syntactic relation between some abstract Person and the nominative. ...
... To develop my argument, I begin with standard Spa (45), relevant because it combines accusative la as Theme with dative so-called aspectual se (see Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, Sanz 1999. ...
In Spanish some unaccusative constructions with psych verbs and dative subjects disallow 1/2 nominative objects : A Ana se le antojan ellos. Ann.Dat 3Ref 3Sg.Dat fancy.3Pl they.Nom ‘Ann fancies them.’ vs. *A Ana nos le antojamos nosotros. Ann.Dat 1Pl.Ref 3Sg.Dat fancy.1Pl we.Nom ‘*Ann fancies us.'
I argue that such a restriction should be captured in post-syntactic morphology in view of the properties of clitics.
... The reason for this wide interest in reflexives is the functional overload that these elements show in many languages, where the reflexive marker (henceforth RM) can not only appear in semantically reflexive constructions but can also act as a reciprocal marker (see, for instance, the studies presented in Nedjalkov [2007]), a middle marker (see, among others, Kemmer [1993]) or even as a passive or impersonal marker (see Siewierska [1984] for a typological account). For a smaller number of languages, an allegedly aspectual function of the RM has also been described (see Cornips and Hulk [1996] for Heerlen Dutch and French, Campanini and Schäfer [2011] for French and Italian), an analysis that has been very successful for some Spanish constructions over the last three decades or so (Basilico 2010;Campanini and Schäfer 2011;De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000;McCready and Nishida 2008;Nishida 1994;Rigau 1994;Sánchez López 2002;Sanz and Laka 2002;Zagona 1996). In this paper, I challenge these claims for an aspectual se in Spanish by identifying some empirical problems that arise in connection with it. ...
... While traditional accounts did not go much further than merely noting these uses (especially with intransitive verbs) and considering the RM an ethical dative, they have received a great deal of attention in the last twenty-five years. Perhaps the most prevalent tendency in modern accounts (especially within the generative framework) is to attribute an aspectual function to the RM (Basilico 2010;Campanini and Schäfer 2011;De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000;McCready and Nishida 2008;Nishida 1994;Rigau 1994;Sánchez López 2002;Sanz and Laka 2002;Zagona 1996, and to some extent MacDonald 2017), although some authors have argued that the presence of the RM in these constructions is (also) related to semantic features of the verbal arguments, such as the agentivity of the subject (Aaron and Torres Cacoullos 2005;Armstrong 2013;De la Mora 2011;Di Tullio 2012;García Fernández 2015;Maldonado 1989Maldonado , 1999Maldonado , 2000Rivas 2011;Torres Cacoullos and Schwenter 2008). In this paper, I will concentrate on the former, the aspectual function. ...
... ate.1SG ten apples and now me duele el estómago. me.DAT hurts the stomach 'I ate ten apples and now my stomach hurts' (Nishida 1994) (De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000) While many authors have proposed that the presence of the RM with these verbs is related to the aspectual characteristics of the predicate, specific accounts vary as to which aspectual characteristics are attributed to the reflexive pronoun or verb. Early accounts had already noted that reflexive verbs such as morirse 'to die', venirse 'to come', marcharse 'to leave', quedarse 'to stay/remain', caerse 'to fall' and dormirse 'to fall asleep' are perfective, as opposed to their non-reflexive counterparts (Fernández Ramírez 1986). ...
The goal of this paper is to revisit the so-called aspectual se , frequently cited over the last three decades as a new function of reflexive pronouns in Spanish and other languages, which refers to facultative uses of the reflexive pronoun where it has no effect on the valency or diathesis of the verb. I will focus on four empirical problems that such accounts face when dealing with corpus data: the requirement of a delimited object for transitive verbs, the semantic implications of the aspectual function of the reflexive pronoun, the unacceptability of the reflexive pronoun with some predicates, and the fact that these accounts have ignored a number of predicates that also take this facultative reflexive pronoun. I argue that a larger sample of both contexts and verbs, obtained by exhaustively analyzing corpus data, is necessary to improve our understanding of these uses.
... However, what is meant by "narrower" remains unexplained. Nishida (1994) proposes the existence of separate se q , a syntactic marker that is attached to the verb in the deep structure of the clause and that subcategorizes for a quantitatively delimited direct object. Zagona (1996), in turn, characterizes the completive reflexive as a verbal operator that relates the subject and the object with respect to the location of the two at the culmination of the event. ...
... Finally, the benefactive function extends to the completive reflexive, which is the main focus of this paper. The completive reflexive not only implies that an The Spanish completive reflexive alienable object is brought into the subject's dominion, but more importantly indicates its full exploitation (Basilico 2010;Maldonado 1992Maldonado , 2008Nishida 1994;Sanz 2000). That is, (31) not only conveys that Victor benefited from eating meat; what is crucial here is that the meat was consumed in its totality. ...
... These verbs typically refer to activities without a well-defined end point. When combined with completive se, however, they become telic (Nishida 1994;Sanz 2000). As such, completive se is compatible with span adverbs such as in an hour but not with durative adverbs such as for an hour; see (34). ...
Constructions are not predictable but are motivated: Evidence from the Spanish completive reflexive Many researchers seem to think that Construction Grammar posits the existence of only wholly idiosyncratic constructions. However, this misconception betrays a deep misunderstanding of the approach because it glosses over the fact that constructions rarely if ever emerge sui generis. Rather, Construction Grammar aims to balance the fact that some linguistic uses cannot be fully predicted from other well-established uses with the fact that extensions of a construction, while not predictable, are motivated by other senses in the constructional network. This paper illustrates this idea by providing an analysis of the Spanish completive reflexive marker se.
... Sendo assim, o exemplo em (29) constituiria a parte causativa e o exemplo em (15), a parte incoativa. No entanto, mesmo com a possibilidade de a partícula se presente na sentença em (15) ser um se incoativo ao invés do operador aspectual se, optamos por considerá-lo na análise por dois motivos: o primeiro motivo é que, segundo Nishida (1994), o verbo "acabar" é inerentemente télico, pois produz situações télicas quando possuem um sintagma nominal determinado como objeto direto; e o segundo motivo é que, segundo Montrul (1999), o se incoativo também está associado a uma propriedade aspectual, uma vez que denota telicidade. ...
... Por um lado, Sanz e Laka (2002) e Suárez Cepeda (2005) afirmam que verbos de estado genuínos não podem se associar ao se aspectual. Por outro lado, Nishida (1994) afirma que tais verbos podem aparecer combinados a essa partícula e De Miguel e Lagunilla (2000) apontam que verbos de estado que indicam mudança de estado, como "saber" em "Me sé la lección", autorizam a produção dessa partícula. Neste trabalho, os resultados dos testes mostraram associação do operador aspectual se a um único verbo de estado que indica mudança de estado ("Miguel estudió mucho y se aprendió todo el contenido"). ...
... Incluímos na análise inclusive sentenças com verbos de estado, considerando-se que autores comoNishida (1994) indicam que mesmo esses verbos podem se combinar ao operador aspectual se em sentenças télicas. Por outro lado, excluímos da análise tanto sentenças produzidas pelos informantes que fossem comentários e não descrições das ações desempenhadas pela personagem nas fotos (como em "no sé cómo se habla") quanto sentenças télicas que tivessem um se reflexivo, devido ao fato de esse tipo de se assumir uma outra função na sentença diferente daquela assumida pelo operador aspectual se.14 Em alguns exemplos, a oração anterior foi inserida para esclarecer o contexto. ...
http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1984-8412.2017v14n2p2076Este trabalho enquadra-se no paradigma teórico do gerativismo por assumir que o traço aspectual de telicidade é representado na faculdade da linguagem e tem por objetivo investigar contextos semânticos e morfossintáticos que ensejem o uso do operador aspectual se na expressão desse traço no espanhol do Chile (EC). As hipóteses testadas são que, no EC, esse operador (i) aparece exclusivamente combinado a verbos de consumo e (ii) não aparece combinado à perífrase formada por "estar" (no presente) + gerúndio. Para tanto, aplicaram-se um teste de produção semiespontânea e um de julgamento de gramaticalidade comentado a cinco falantes nativos. Os resultados indicaram que esse operador parece (i) bastante produtivo com verbos de consumo, mas também associado a outros tipos de verbo, (ii) mais produtivo em sentenças cujo verbo tenha aspecto perfectivo e (iii) obrigatório com verbos inacusativos participantes da alternância causativa/incoativa quando utilizados em sua parte incoativa. As hipóteses foram refutadas.
... Consider four of them. First: Asp se occurs with otherwise transitive predicates (Nishida 1994;Basilico 2010;Armstrong 2013). 2 Second: It is often referred to as aspectual se, because it is widely thought to always give rise to a telic VP (Sanz 2000;Sanz and Laka 2002;Basilico 2010;Campanini and Schäfer 2011). 3 This is illustrated in (2). ...
... He highlights three properties that distinguish it from the Asp se construction: '(i) it requires an agent, (ii) it adds a conventional implicature of willful intent to the agent and (iii) it imposes an aspectual restriction on the VP where it appears ( = only accomplishments).' (Armstrong 2013: 82). Some examples marked ungrammatical with Asp se are grammatical as agentive reflexive clitics, namely those discussed in Section 6. 3 Nishida (1994) observes that Asp se occurs with stative predicates and argues that situations denoted by predicates with Asp se are 'quantitatively delimited', a notion akin to telic. She assumes the same for the stative predicates with Asp se as well. ...
... Third: In the presence of Asp se the direct object cannot be a bare noun (Arce-Arenales 1989;Nishida 1994;Zagona 1996;Sanz and Laka 2002;Basilico 2010, among others). 5 This is illustrated in (3). ...
This article discusses four properties of Spanish aspectual se constructions. 1. The telicity inducing effects of se; 2. The ungrammaticality of bare noun direct objects; 3. Leísta Spanish Person Case Constraint (PCC) repairs; and 4. A central/terminal coincidence relation between the direct object and the subject. I show that aspectual se does not induce telicity with stative VPs. The ungrammaticality of bare noun direct objects results from the direct object functioning as an ‘inner subject’ of a complex predicate formed by the verb and a null preposition, the complement of which is a pro coreferential with the external argument. The semantics of the null P plus verb give rise to a central/terminal coincidence relation between the direct object and the complement of P. Moreover, I argue that the null pro moves to Spec, Appl and functions as an indirect object. In this respect, aspectual se is an indirect object reflexive. The resulting structure, moreover, is fundamentally a double object construction, a construction in which PCC effects are known to hold.
... The number of adjectives that may form part of this construction is not high and neither is the number of intransitive verbs (such as morirse 'to die', irse 'to go', venirse 'to come', salirse 'to leave', subirse 'to go up', bajarse 'to go down', quedarse 'to stay', caerse 'to fall down' and a few more), and the number of transitive stative predicates that take the so-called aspectual se (such as saberse 'to know', conocerse 'to know' and a few more) (see Nishida, 1994;Zagona, 1996;de Miguel & Férnández Lagunilla, 2000;Sanz & Laka, 2002 and others). Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the number of transitive predicates with incremental themes that habitually take se is not high either (comerse 'to eat up', beberse 'to drink up', fumarse 'to smoke', and their colloquial equivalents: zamparse 'to gobble up', jalarse 'to gobble up', etc.); however, note that they are significantly more productive than those mentioned above. ...
... Although it is not immediately relevant for our purposes, note that there is a well-known effect due to the presence of the clitic with consumption verbs that requires that the event be telic; consequently, consumption verbs with the clitic reject bare plural nouns as objects, since bare plural nouns are unbounded and cannot provide a telos for the events (Nishida, 1994;Folli & Harley, 2005;Basilico, 2010 The data in (ii) conforms to the point made by Nishida (1994). The objects that appear with consumption verbs and the clitic quantitatively delimit the extension of the event, providing a bound for it. ...
... Although it is not immediately relevant for our purposes, note that there is a well-known effect due to the presence of the clitic with consumption verbs that requires that the event be telic; consequently, consumption verbs with the clitic reject bare plural nouns as objects, since bare plural nouns are unbounded and cannot provide a telos for the events (Nishida, 1994;Folli & Harley, 2005;Basilico, 2010 The data in (ii) conforms to the point made by Nishida (1994). The objects that appear with consumption verbs and the clitic quantitatively delimit the extension of the event, providing a bound for it. ...
... Arce Arenales 1989: 297-298, Barra Jover 1996: 125-128, Otero 1999: 1472-1473, de Miguel 1999: 2986y 2995, Sanz 2000, Sánchez López 2002: 109 y 111, Sanz y Laka 2002: 310, Kempchinsky 2004: 243-244, Bosque y Gutiérrez-Rexach 2009: 423, RAE 2009: 1707-1708y 2703, Basilico 2010: 275, Campanini y Schäfer 2011, Camacho Ramírez 2014b: 116, Trebisacce 2014, o es un operador aspectual no ligado a la telicidad (cf. Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, Fernández Lagunilla y de Miguel 1999, de Miguel y Fernández Lagunilla 2000, Pérez Vázquez 2002, Azpiazu 2004, García Fernández 2011, Armstrong 2013, MacDonald 2017, o equivale a un marcador que refleja ya sea cierta implicación del sujeto oracional (cf. Bello (y Cuervo) 1860: 258, Alonso Cortés 1939: 16-17, Bull 1952: 383, Lázaro Carreter 1964: 389-390, Contreras 1966: 97, Schroten 1972: 90, Alarcos Llorach 1970c: 218, de Molina Redondo 1974: 61 y ss., Alcina Franch y Blecua 1975: 911 y ss., Gutiérrez Ordóñez 1977: 450, y 1999: 1909-1917, Martín Zorraquino 1979: 107-108, 321 y 336, Cano Aguilar 1981: 276, Gooch 1982, Narbona Jiménez 1984: 180 y 184, Hernández Alonso 1984: 166-167, y 1995: 89, García Miguel 1985: 341, Arce Arenales 1989: 297, y 1994: 203, Delbecque y Lamiroy 1996: 25, Maldonado 1997: 179, Sánchez López 2002: 114, D'Introno, González y Rivas 2007: 8-10, Bogard 2006: 772-773, y 2015: 36-37, RAE 2009: 2703, Armstrong 2013 y 101, García Fernández 2015: 285, etc.), ya sea una mayor relación entre sujeto y OD (cf. ...
... Por otro lado, todas las construcciones con clítico aspectual -las télicas y durativas, y las estativas que añade García Fernández-las explica este último (cf. García Fernández 2011a) a partir de la teoría de Nishida (1994) 57 . Ahora bien, eso supondría, primero, volver a encontrar los mismos problemas señalados más arriba a la hora de aplicar la propuesta de la autora japonesa a los predicados estativos con el clítico. ...
El punto de partida de este trabajo son las construcciones oracionales transitivas españolas en las que, según muchas de las últimas propuestas, aparece lo que se denomina un clítico dativo, siempre facultativo, con valor aspectual. Se trata de estructuras con lo que algunos llaman un se paradigmático, en las que la forma pronominal concuerda en número y persona con el sujeto, pero carece de la opción del doblado característica del clítico reflexivo mediante una forma tónica del pronombre personal introducida por la preposición a, y en las que el OD debe ser cuantificado o definido –lo que le exige presentar un determinante nominal– y el predicado debe tener, generalmente, carácter télico y durativo con simultaneidad (Juan se comió los bocadillos (*a sí)). No obstante, nuestro planteamiento asume la imposibilidad de un análisis aislado de este tipo de construcciones, esto es, de un análisis que no las relacione con otras perfectamente gramaticales, que coinciden con ellas en ser transitivas y en que el clítico que incluyen no modifica la estructura sintácticosemántica oracional, pero que difieren en que carecen de un OD cuantificado y de un predicado simultáneamente télico y durativo (Juan se comió enormes bocadillos de jamón durante la cena, Este año ya me he cruzado la frontera varias veces, El alumno se supo la lección). Dos son nuestros objetivos básicos: 1) ensayar una reflexión crítica acerca de las propuestas que se decantan en muchos de estos casos por una caracterización del clítico como operador aspectual o que asumen en el análisis de este tipo de estructuras ideas como la de la implicación del sujeto ligada a la intencionalidad y la de una mayor relación entre sujeto y OD, y 2) elaborar una propuesta personal y alternativa, que intenta, por un lado, asignar un valor común a todos los clíticos no reflexivos concordados con el sujeto, compatibles con las construcciones transitivas y que no implican cambios en la estructura sintáctico-semántica de estas. Por otro, delimitar los factores que influyen en la presencia de este clítico.
... Fernández (1986) ya nota que ciertos predicados intransitivos, como morirse, venirse, marcharse y dormirse, son perfectivos, a diferencia de sus versiones sin el clítico, morir, venir, marchar y dormir. También se ha propuesto que es la telicidad del predicado lo que licencia la presencia del clítico (Sanz y Laka, 2002), que el clítico marca la culminación del evento (De Miguel y Fernández, 2000), y que es un indicador de la delimitación del objeto (Nishida, 1994). ...
... En virtud de los tipos de predicados con los que aparece, se ha asociado a este tipo de se con un modo de acción que legitima su presencia, lo que ha llevado a que la tendencia más reciente en la bibliografía sea atribuir una función aspectual a este clítico y denominarlo se aspectual (Basílico, 2010;Campanini y Schäfer, 2011;De Miguel y Fernández, 2000;Nishida, 1994;Sánchez, 2002;Sanz y Laka, 2002;Zagona, 1996;MacDonald, 2017). En resumen, si bien los abordajes del se aspectual muestran diferencias entre sí en cuanto a los detalles de cada análisis, De Benito (2021) señala que comparten algunas características: ...
En este trabajo abordamos construcciones que contienen el llamado se aspectual del español con el objetivo de determinar si las propiedades asociadas a estas construcciones se reflejan en datos históricos del español de América. Tomando como punto de partida las observaciones de De Benito (2021) sobre datos del español peninsular del corpus COSER, mostramos que las dificultades teórico-prácticas en el estudio de este fenómeno no son exclusivas del español actual ni del español de la península, sino que resultan evidentes en datos del español americano desde una perspectiva diacrónica. A partir del recojo de datos del corpus CORDIAM, ilustramos instancias de se aspectual del español del Río de La Plata (Argentina y Uruguay) entre los siglos XVI y XIX. Concluimos que los análisis más extendidos se basan en una serie de contrastes estrictos y de pruebas de (a)gramaticalidad que no necesariamente se reflejan en los datos diacrónicos observados. Esto es uno de los motivos centrales por los cuales los estudios del se aspectual no han permitido llegar a un abordaje acabado de los datos, con herramientas que no pueden extenderse a todos los casos.
... 27 Sobre la relación semántica entre este tipo de complementos, que constituyen temas incrementales, véanse Krifka (1989;; Nishida (1994). ...
... Obsérvese que en (1b) y (1c) los objetos de estos verbos no se corresponden únicamente con una interpretación de tema, sino con una interpretación de tema incremental en la que el objeto se ve afectado gradualmente a medida que avanza el evento (Krifka 1989;Nishida 1994). De esta manera, a medida que avanzan los eventos expresados por seguir y continuar el objeto se va viendo afectado: en (1b) a medida que Juan sigue, la ruta, la línea o los puntos van siendo recorridos; en (1c) a medida que Juan continúa la lectura va siendo realizada. ...
... However, the delimitative and completive readings are distinguished by an obligatory completive marker in the form of the reflexive pronoun se in Spanish, which is used with verbs of different actional classes and in different TAM forms. The function of the form has been frequently discussed (e.g., Nishida 1994;Sanz 2000;Sanz/ Laka 2002). Evidence for se being a completive marker lies in the fact that it is obligatory (cf. ...
... Analyses have been proposed to describe different uses of Romance se. For instance, Melis (1985Melis ( , 1990a) expanded on the classical grouping for French pronominals, while Nishida (1994) identified uses of Spanish se as an overt aspectual class marker. For Italian, Cennamo's extensive work sheds light on several phenomena regarding the diachronic development of the Late Latin/Early Romance reflexive se/sibi. ...
... For instance, within the cognitive grammar framework (Maldonado 1988(Maldonado , 1989(Maldonado , 1999 and the variationist literature (Aaron 2003(Aaron , 2004Aaron and Torres Cacoullos 2005;Torres Cacoullos and Schwenter 2008), the MM has been linked to pragmatic notions such as counter-expectation and subjectification. In the generative literature it has been linked to aspectual constraints related to telicity (de Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000;Nishida 1994;Sánchez López 2002;Sanz and Laka 2002;Zagona 1996, among others). Other authors have proposed that the MM is linked to a specific type of subject, such as agents (Armstrong 2013). ...
This paper seeks to explore the possibility that Spanish intransitive verbs showing middle marking with no associated change of valency are a source of non-oppositional middle verbs. In order to do so, a study is conducted of the historical evolution of the middle-marked Spanish verb reír(se) ‘to laugh’ as well as other semantically related verbs (such as alegrar(se) ‘to be happy, pleased’, regocijarse ‘to rejoice’ and burlar(se), mofar(se), escarnecer(se) ‘to mock, to ridicule, to make fun of’), where the presence of the middle marker is associated with a valency-reducing diathesis.
... The reflexive clitic se in optional se constructions has famously been argued to require or enforce a telic interpretation of the underlying predicate with consumption verbs (Nishida 1994; see also Roldán 1971, Zagona 1996, Otero 1999, De Miguel & Fernández Lagunilla 1999, Sanz & Laka 2002, Maldonado 2008, Lewandowski 2021, Martínez Vera 2022. As such it is often analyzed as an aspectual operator, similar to particles of exhaustivity like English up. ...
This paper addresses Spanish optional se constructions, which host a reflexive clitic serving as a non-selected argument in transitive structures (comer(se) la manzana 'eat.REFL the apple'). On the basis of new experimental data, we argue against the view that in such constructions, se is similar to particles of exhaustivity such as up in English. We instead propose that se is a pronoun merged as an argument of a low applicative, conveying a locative relation 'in(x, y, s)' between the binder of the reflexive x and the nominative DP y ('x is in y in s'), or, for a subset of speakers, as an argument of a high applicative, introducing a (direct) experiencer of the verbal event. It is shown how this proposal accounts for the variability in the acceptance of optional se constructions across speakers and verb types as well as for the inferences of enriched or unaided agency, affectedness 2 Isogloss YEAR, ISSUE/NR and counter-expectation that have been argued to be triggered by the se-variant of these constructions.
... In Spanish, whether a sentence can receive a telic interpretation or not also depends on the cardinality of the object (see Nishida 1994, Bonneau et al. 1994. Here, I also use the temporal adverbial test to demonstrate that Spanish and English have the same telicity marking strategy. ...
... The aspectual behavior of the Spanish clitic (Nishida 1994) with AIRs is similar to the behavior of the aspectual marker with other inchoatives as romperse 'break', hundirse 'sink' (de Miguel & Fern andez Lagunilla 2000), and psychological predicates as aburrirse 'get bored' and enfadarse However, some linguists propose that the presence of the clitic is a strategy for marking transitivity (Alexiadou, Anagnostopoulou & Sch€ afer 2015, Heidinger 2015, Sch€ afer 2008, Zagona 1999. They claim that causative alternation is voice alternation, and that the Romance clitic is an expletive voice head. ...
Within the debate about the heterogeneity of unaccusative structures, the aim of this paper is to distinguish two types of Spanish marked anticausative inherent reciprocals (AIRs) from other syntactic reciprocals (SRs) with se. Several diagnostics show that AIRs such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’ are symmetric, unaccusative, telic, and show causative alternations, while SRs are transitive and vary in their aspectual properties and do not show causative alternations. The en/durante ‘in/for’ adverbials test reveals that there are two types of AIRs: achievements such as casarse ‘get married’, and degree achievements such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’. Although the clitic is an agreement marker in these reciprocal constructions, it is an expletive voice head with casarse, a causative head with mezclarse, and an anaphor merged in the internal argument position in SRs. Differences between AIRs and SRs depend on semantic properties associated to their respective event structures.
... Un ejemplo de este tipo de generalizaciones puede encontrarse en la pauta que permite interpretar enunciados como Se tomó un café, el denominado se con verbos de consumo (NGLE: 23.4q). La bibliografía ha propuesto diversas explicaciones: un marcador aspectual que señala la telicidad y perfectividad del evento (Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, Sanz y Laka 2002, un marcador temático que añade un participante con papel temático de experimentador y un estado resultante (García y Pascual 2012) o un marcador de voz media (Maldonado 2006). Con independencia del análisis elegido, un estudiante del español que no conozca esta estructura necesita tener acceso a tres tipos de informaciones. ...
Este artículo constituye una respuesta a la crítica de la gramática de construcciones realizada por Ignacio Bosque en su trabajo La gramática de construcciones: una mirada externa. La crítica de Bosque se complementa con una mirada interna, periférica y aplicada. Para contextualizar mi respuesta, comienzo presentando una panorámica de los enfoques constructivistas, para poner de relieve la existencia de diferencias en cuanto a los intereses como a las herramientas conceptuales y el grado de formalización, así como los aspectos más destacados de los enfoques constructivistas para mis tareas como analista de la sintaxis coloquial (periferia de la sintaxis) y profesor de español como lengua extranjera (visión aplicada). En la segunda parte del texto, respondo a las principales críticas de Bosque desde la versión de la gramática de construcciones desarrollada por Charles Fillmore, que debe dar cuenta tanto de las expresiones idiomáticas como de las composicionales. El objetivo final del texto es contribuir al dialogo interteórico mostrando que las diferencias entre constructivistas y proyeccionistas no son tan extremas como a veces se suele asumir.
... Many authors have claimed that se, with a variety of transitive and intransitive verbs, contributes an aspectual value, claiming that the clitic only occurs with bounded events, e.g. comerse una manzana 'eat-SE an apple', but not comerse manzanas 'eat-SE apples' (Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, De Miguel 1999, De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla 2000, Basilico 2010, but see also MacDonald 2004, 2017, Armstrong 2013; see also Vivanco [this volume] and García-Pardo [this volume] for the analysis of the so-called aspectual se with different types of verbs). In several studies, occurrences with transitive verbs (comerse 'eat-SE', leerse 'read-SE') and with intransitive verbs (irse 'go-SE', morirse 'die-SE', dormirse 'sleep-SE') are not considered separately. ...
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the use of se with directed motion verbs in several Romance languages and varieties. Building on some observations that have been made for Spanish, we adopt a broader cross-linguistic perspective, bringing into discussion an element that has, until now, gone generally unnoticed (aside from descriptive works): the ablative locative clitic that appears, together with se, in Catalan, Italian and Aragonese varieties, as in tornar-se’n ‘go back se ne’ from Catalan. Our data from different Romance languages and dialects allow us to refine the settings of the connection between pronominal directed motion verbs and the existence of a source component. In particular, we posit the existence of a locative head (here tentatively analysed as an applicative), which can be spelled out by an ablative locative clitic. We also argue that directed motion verbs can be conceived of by Romance speakers as simple, punctual events denoting the achievement of a particular position, but also as denoting a complex event that consists of a causing subevent and a resultant state (which is connected to achieving a new position and remaining there for some time, after having left behind the original location). In the latter case, these verbs can surface in their pronominal form, even if it does not happen always, since there is cross-linguistic and cross-dialectal variation regarding the availability of pronominal forms for these verbs, due to different lexicalization patterns.
... La tercera característica de la construcción télica con experimentante dativo es un reflexivo también obligatorio que considero marca esencial de la naturaleza delimitada de la construcción, como acabo de decir. En otras palabras, el esquema discutido en esta sección se caracteriza por la presencia del llamado se aspectual, que si bien ha recibido la atención de muchos (Nishida 1994, Zagona 1996, Sanz 1999, 2000, De Miguel y Fernández Lagunilla 2000, McCready y Nishida 2008 para el español, Folli y Harley 2005, D'Alessandro 2004 para construcciones conexas en el italiano, entre otros), no ha servido de base a la hipótesis de que diferencia dos familias de construcciones psicológicas que hoy tienen propiedades inacusativas, como argumento en este trabajo. En la sección 3, justificaré la naturaleza télica de las construcciones con olvidarse y antojarse por medio de dos características que separan a las dos familias aspec-tuales en todo momento: el tipo de adverbios que modifican a uno u otro tipo, y el contraste con respecto a los imperativos. ...
En español, los verbos psicológicos con experimentantes dativos se subdividen en una familia atélica indicativa de estados –con placer desde la etapa medieval, y gustar poste- riormente–, y otra télica representativa de realizaciones, con verbos como antojarse. La atélica ha experimentado dos cambios morfosintáctios, para asemejarse formalmente a la télica, que no ha cambiado. Un cambio afecta al experimentante, que en la primera etapa era locativo, y se hizo aplicativo. El otro cambio afecta al estímulo de la emoción, que era preposicional/oblicuo en una construcción sin nominativo, y ahora es un argumento interno nominativo en concordancia con el verbo.
In Spanish, psychological verbs with dative experiencers subdivide into an atelic family representative of states –with placer “please” since medieval times, and gustar “like” later-, and a telic one representing accomplishments, with verbs such antojarse “take a fancy”. The atelic class underwent two morphosyntactic changes, and came to formally resemble the telic class, which did not change. One change affects the experiencer, which was locative and became applicative. The other change affects the stimulus, which was prepo- sitional/oblique in a counstruction without nominative, and became a nominative internal argument in agreement with the verb.
Palabras clave:verbos psicológicos, experimentantes dativos, aspecto, telicidad, diacronía
... Quand se est substituable par un SN ou par un autre pronom objet, il remplit la fonction d'un OD. Le pronom réfléchi dans (78a) Les phrases (79b-c) indiquent que dans (79a) se remplit également la fonction --------49 Pour l'espagnol il convient de citer les ouvrages de Alarcos Llorach (1970), Cano Aguilar (1981), De Miguel (1992, Espinosa García (1995), Maldonado (1999), Martín Zorraquino (1979), , Moreira Rodríguez/Butt (1996), Nishida (1994, Oesterreicher (1992), Schmidt-Riese (1998) et Peregrín Otero (1999; pour le français voir entre autres Melis (1990), Ruwet (1972, Waltereit (2000) et Wehrli (1986; pour des études plus générales des constructions pronominales, voir Cennamo (1993), Reinhart (1996) et Selig (1998). syntaxique d'un OD mais que, contrairement à ce que nous avons observé à propos de (78), le sujet n'agit pas sur un autre participant mais sur lui-même. ...
... Es sabido que este se se combina con realizaciones que incluyen un tema incremental (cf. Nishida 1994, De Miguel 1999, García Fernández 2015, entre otros) que mide la duración del evento y requiere que este sea télico (67). En (68-70) vemos que la aparición del se aspectual resulta agramatical 21 en las construcciones con poner, lo que confirma que hay una restricción de atelicidad: ...
Este artículo trata de esclarecer aspectos clave de la semántica y la sintaxis de la construcción <poner algo ~ a alguien a + infinitivo>, muy poco estudiada en la gramática del español. Se argumentará que la preposición a desempeña un papel crucial en su semántica causativa y en sus restricciones aspectuales (incoatividad), y se propondrá, además, un análisis sintáctico que permita explicar sus propiedades híbridas, entre el control y la reestructuración.
... As is true for many phenomena in L2 acquisition, one of the factors that influences whether L2 learners achieve a targetlike representation concerns the relationship between the relevant representations in the L1 and the L2. Speaking of predicate aspect, the L1 and the L2 may use essentially the same encoding of aspect as, for example, English and Spanish do for lexical aspect (i.e., object boundedness influences the aspectual value of the predicate; Nishida, 1994). Alternatively, the L1 and the L2 may use different encoding mechanisms, as in the case of English versus Bulgarian or Russian (in Bulgarian and Russian, object boundedness does not influence aspect but affixes on verbs do). ...
Previous studies on the acquisition of semantics in the aspectual domain have suggested that a difficult case for achieving a targetlike representation in a second language arises when learners need to preempt a first language (L1) option (Gabriele, 2009). This study investigates this issue by focusing on a learning scenario where predicate-level variability exists in the L1 input. We investigate whether Japanese learners of English can learn to invalidate event cancellation readings (Tsujimura, 2003) in English and how such knowledge develops with increasing English proficiency. We address these questions by examining how Japanese learners of English interpret accomplishment predicates that allow an event cancellation reading in Japanese but not in English. A truth-value judgment task was administered to 60 beginner, 96 intermediate, and 40 advanced Japanese learners of English as well as 20 L1 English and 20 L1 Japanese speakers. Our results showed that Japanese learners of English progressed toward a targetlike representation of aspectual entailment. We argue that such progress follows two parallel routes: a grammatical route rooted in the learners’ growing awareness of the English determiner and number morphology combined with a statistical route rooted in the learners’ inferences based on missing data.
... El problema radica, pensamos, en la imposibilidad de encontrar un correlato transitivo para (24) en el que Juan ocupe la posición de objeto. Para García Fernández, todas las construcciones con clítico aspectual -incluidas las estativas que él añade-pueden explicarse mediante las tesis de Nishida (1994), lo que, entre otras muchas cuestiones, supondría volver a encontrar los mismos problemas señalados más arriba a la hora de aplicar la propuesta de la autora japonesa a los predicados estativos con el clítico 18 . A diferencia de la propuesta de García Fernández (2011), para Amstrong (2013, pp. ...
La existencia en español de construcciones transitivas con predicados estativos y un clítico paradigmático no reflexivo y concordado en número y persona con el sujeto (“El alumno se supo la lección”) ocasionaserias dificultades a aquellas propuestas según las cuales un clítico con estas características en construcciones oracionales transitivas o es un operador aspectual que aparece exclusivamente en predicados télicos y durativos, o es un operador aspectual no ligado a la telicidad, o equivale a un marcador que refleja ya sea cierta implicación del sujeto oracional, ya sea una mayor relación entre sujeto y OD. Además de plantear cuáles son esas dificultades, son objetivos de este artículo explicar 1) la compatibilidad de unos predicados estativos transitivos con este clítico frente a la incompatibilidad de otros; 2) la compatibilidad de determinados predicados estativos transitivos con este clítico con algunos OD que son plurales escuetos, y 3) la compatibilidad de determinados predicados estativos transitivos con este clítico con OD que no son plurales escuetos y carecen de determinación explícita.
... 6.2.2. The aspectual contribution of "se": De Miguel (1999) The use of clitic se in both intransitives and transitives is crucially related to lexical aspect according to a long list of authors such as Nishida (1994); Zagona (1996);De Miguel (1999); De Miguel and Fernández Lagunilla (2000); Sanz (2000); Kempchinsky (2004); MacDonald (2004) b. Juan (*se) come tortilla siempre que puede Juan se eat:3s omelette ever that can:3s 'Juan eats omelette whenever he can' De Miguel 1999, 2995 (18) a. ...
The different patterns of the direct (i.e., lexical) causativization exhibited by intransitive verbs are a fundamental topic in the lexical semantics area. The possibilities and restrictions observed in the causativization of intransitives have always triggered divisions in their classification beyond the classical unergative-unaccusative distinction. Spanish is an interesting language in which to explore the limits between possibilities and constraints regarding this phenomenon, given the syntactic variation exhibited by its different dialects. This chapter focuses on variation in the form of contrasts between intransitive predicates that resist lexical causativization in Standard Spanish, such as caer “fall” and entrar “go in,” but allow it in certain Southern Peninsular Spanish dialects such as Andalusian, looking at the relationship between such patterns and other phenomena such as the eventive structure obtained as a consequence of the composition of the verbs under study and other syntactic elements such as reflexive se .
... German has similar examples: Erblühen (to start flowering: inchoative aspect), blühen (flowering) and verblühen (to wither: resultative aspect) (from Klein 1994). In the Romance languages, only Spanish uses a telic particle, se, to change the basic meaning of a verb overtly (Nishida 1994). For instance, in the following pair of sentences in Spanish the particle se introduces the same type of aspectual nuance of meaning exemplified in Germanic languages (examples are from Nishida 1994: 426, 430): ...
This volume presents a state-of-the-art descriptive and explanatory analysis of the second language development of Romance tense-aspect systems. It contains new experimental data from adult French, Catalan, Portuguese learners, and Italian children learners. Standing research questions are addressed and pedagogical implications for foreign language classrooms are proposed arguing that there are possible commonalities in the instructional sequences of tense-aspect development in Romance languages. The first chapter presents an overview of current theoretical approaches and a summary of empirical findings. The following four chapters introduce new empirical data from a variety of theoretical perspectives (e.g., the Aspect Hypothesis, the UG/Minimalist framework). Chapter 5 proposes practical pedagogical approaches for the foreign language classroom based on empirical findings. The last chapter summarizes and discusses these findings in order to start elaborating a more comprehensive model of the development of tense-aspect marking in the Romance languages.
... We Participles, proposed as unaccusativity symptoms: L'enfant a (*est) joué 'The child (has/*is) played,' *El niño jugado, entraron '*The child played, (they) went in.' 2 Spanish has also a telic se which contrasts in (in)transitivization, coexisting with an obligatory object NP as delimiter (Nishida 1994, Sanz 1999 Vs like ask and know display non-reflexive and reflexive versions with similar (truth conditional) semantics, with the last indicating deeper involvement. Grappin (1963) glosses patrzeć as 'to look' and patrzeć się 'to look intensely'. ...
This paper describes the acquisition stages in Polish of constructions with reflexive clitics, and with modal wolno ‘allow’. It argues that such acquisition data provide new support for the Maturation Hypothesis : UG is not available in adult form in all stages of acquisition, but matures into the adult grammar. The representations allowed in proto-UG are a subset of representations allowed by UG. During grammatical development, UG principles are reformulated, remaining a subset of adult grammar at all developmental stages.
... According to Nishida (1994), the aspectual clitic is a marker for quantitatively defined events; it is based on Krifka's (1989Krifka's ( , 1991 assumption which attempts to explain that the aspectual nature of a predicate may depend on the denotation of its complement. The idea is that there is a homomorphism between certain complements and the events in which the objects they denote are involved. ...
This volume offers a variety of perspectives on two of the main topics situated at the crossroads between lexical semantics and syntax, namely: (a) aspect and its correspondence with syntactic structure; and (b) the delimitation of syntactic structures from verb classes. Almost from Aristotle’s Metaphysics, it has been assumed that verbs invoke a mental image about the way in which eventualities are distributed over time. When it comes to determining time schemata, the lexical class to which the verb belongs represents a first step. Speaking about verb classes does not exclusively mean a semantic similarity; rather, verb classes exhibit a bundle of common features and thus show a set of recursive behavior patterns. Beyond the meaning of the verb, both semantic and syntactic factors, together with pragmatic ones, play a decisive role when establishing the aspectual classification of an eventuality. The contributions collected in this book approach the aforementioned lines, either analyzing the relationships between aspect and syntactic structure or traversing the path from a verb class to its syntactic manifestation. Some of them stress diachronic filiations, while others include processes of word formation in the debate; some of them focus on certain classes, such as movement verbs or psychological verbs, while others examine specific constructions. A number of chapters also discuss relevant theoretical issues concerning the analysis of aspect. In sum, the kaleidoscopic view provided by this book allows the reader to delve deeper into one of the most controversial – as well as exciting – topics within current linguistics.
... This metaphor implicitly underlies many of the aspect-oriented approaches of the Spanish (medio-)passive, e.g. Nishida (1994). ...
This paper focuses on oblique variation in the passive. It relies on insights on causal modeling to study the construction types available to express a passive or medio-passive meaning in Spanish. Oblique variation is argued to fulfill an important function in the profiling of the relation between agent and patient, causer and causee, affectant and affectee. The choice of the preposition is shown to function as a device for agenthood management. Based on distributional evidence, the systematic survey of representative corpus examples with the four most frequent prepositions (por 'by, through, en 'in', de 'of, from' and con 'with') sheds light on issues related to the prototypicity and nuclearity of participant relations in passive and medio-passive construals.
Contemporary Trends in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics offers a panorama of current research into multiple varieties of Spanish from several different regions (Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Costa Rica, Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras), Catalan, Brazilian Portuguese, as well as varieties in contact with English and Purépecha. The first part of the volume focuses on the structural aspects and use of these languages in the areas of syntax, semantics, sociolinguistics, diachrony, phonetics, phonology and morphology. The second part discusses the effect of interacting multiple grammars, namely, first language acquisition, second language acquisition, varieties in contact, and bilingualism. As a whole, the contributions in this volume provide a methodological balance between qualitative and quantitative approaches to Language and, in this way, represent contemporary trends in Hispanic and Lusophone linguistics.
Desde una perspectiva semántica, los objetos tácitos de predicados del tipo de "comer" a) reciben una lectura indefinida, b) se introducen en predicados de actividad y c) tienen ámbito estrecho con respecto a la negación. Desde una perspectiva sintáctica, no se encuentran proyectados en la estructura, puesto que i) no pueden participar de relaciones anafóricas y ii) no pueden ser modificados por adjetivos, ni de ellos se puede predicar un complemento predicativo. En otras palabras, en un predicado de actividad como "comer" se interpreta un tema, pero no se proyecta un objeto sintáctico. Esto es llamativo en comparación con el comportamiento gramatical de los ST, que están representados sintácticamente.
The main goal of this article is to argue and provide support for the distinction between eventive and stative verbal predicates being encoded in the syntax. More specifically, following Travis (1991, 2010, MacDonald 2008, Kardos & Farkas 2022), I provide arguments for the existence of an aspectual functional projection situated between Voice and VP: AspP. I argue that eventive verbal predicates project AspP and stative verbal predicates do not. Its syntactic presence serves as input to semantics giving rise to a dynamic predicate, a predicate that entails (some amount of) change along a scale, based on scalar approaches to eventive verbal predicates (Hay et al. 1999, Kennedy & Levin 2008, Beavers 2011, 2013, among others). Empirically, I discuss two phenomena from Spanish: hacerlo "do so" substitution and verbal interfixes, like ot in fregotear "to scrub at" (vs. fregar "to scrub"). I argue that hacer selects for AspP while the verbal interfixes head Asp. Support for the main proposal that there is a syntactic distinction between eventives and statives emerges from the ungrammaticality of hacerlo when it takes a stative verbal antecedent and the fact that the output of interfixation does not give rise to stative verbal predicates, only eventive verbal predicates
This paper is dedicated to correlative constructions in Russian. Russian has a very rich system of correlatives and they reveal some peculiarities (e.g. coordination of correlative clauses and stacking) that cannot be explained within the existing theories.
The article is published in: FORMAL STUDIES IN SLAVIC LINGUISTICS Proceedings of Formal Description of Slavic Languages 7.5. "Linguistik International" Vol 25. 2010, Peter Lang GmbH Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften, 2010, pp 135-151
This book contains a peer-reviewed selection of papers presented at the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 46) that took place in April 2016 at Stony Brook University (SUNY), New York. The most current research and debates on bilingualism, historical linguistics, morphology, phonology, semantics, sociolinguistics, and syntax can be found in its pages. This collection will be of interest to Romance linguists and general linguists as well.
Our work aimed to study the influence of cholecalciferol on neurogenesis, neurotrophins and their receptors pathway-focused genes expression in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis and hypothyroidism. The pathway-specific PCR array (Neurotrophins and Receptors RT2 Profiler PCR Array, “QIAGEN”, Germany) was used to identify and validate the neurogenesis regulatory genes expression in patients with thyroid pathology and control group. The results showed that in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis-caused primary hypothyroidism, the expression of BDNF, FAS, FGF2, HSPB1, IL10, NGF, NGFR, NRG1, NTF3, NTF4, TGFB1, and TP53 were increased after treatment with cholecalciferol and L-thyroxine. The mRNA levels of BAX, GDNF, CD40, FOS, GDNF, GFRA1, IL1B, and STAT3 were significantly decreased in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis-caused primary hypothyroidism after treatment with cholecalciferol and Lthyroxine compared to the patients who received only L-thyroxine. Therefore, the addition of vitamin D to standard therapy alters the transcriptional profile of blood cells in patients with primary hypothyroidism.
This article provides an overview of Spanish SE, covering the main empirical facts, analyses and theoretical issues that it raises, and exploring the prospects to unify all uses –which are over a dozen in the literature– under one same object that keeps its surface properties invariable. We will show that it is almost inescapable to propose that SE is associated to two types of objects, defective arguments and defective verbal heads; both objects share the property of not introducing referentially independent DPs, which can be argued to be the result of the grammaticalisation of a reflexive element in contemporary Spanish. The chapter proposes that a treatment of SE as a projection introduced high in the clausal structure and acting as an agreement locus can be a fruitful way to unify all uses of SE.
This chapter addresses the co-existence of two morphological mechanisms to express the causative-unaccusative alternation in Spanish: se and Ø. It has been observed that the choice between these patterns seems to be related to aspect in Romance. However, a detailed study of Spanish data will allow us to refine this hypothesis by claiming that aspect itself is determined by scale structure. Se and Ø will be analyzed as two lexical items competing to spell out the same head, v[BECOME], related to unaccusativity and located above AspP. Therefore, scale structure and, eventually, aspect will be the relevant grammatical factors determining the competition to spell out v[BECOME] in Spanish.
In this chapter, we discuss sequences of (un)grammatical direct object clitics with impersonal se (Impse). We focus mainly on the patterns in Honduran Spanish, although we discuss several points of variation among Romance languages. It is shown that when Impse forms a clitic cluster with lo(s)/la(s), ungrammaticality results, and as a repair le(s) surfaces instead. It is argued that lo(s)/la(s) is specified for [D(efiniteness)] and Impse spells out a valued [D] feature on T. A Distributed Morphology account of the change from lo(s)/la(s) to le(s) is provided. It is argued that, as a clitic cluster on T, the two [D] features are filtered out by impoverishment; [D] on lo(s)/la(s) is deleted prior to Vocabulary Insertion, resulting in the only third person clitic underspecified for [D] that can be inserted: le(s). We illustrate how this change to le(s) has no semantic or structural consequences, as expected if the operations take place after syntax.
This book explores the syntactic nature of inner aspect from a minimalist perspective. It begins with the new observation that there are two independent properties at play in English inner aspect: the object-to-event mapping and event structure. From a discussion of English statives and Russian, it is concluded that the former property is variant and the latter universal; a minimalist conception of language variation arises naturally in this context. Additionally, an exploration of a lexical derivational approach to achievements leads to the expectation that there are no accomplishments in the lexicon. A detailed look at idioms suggests that this expectation is met. These results support the division of labor between an operative lexicon and narrow syntax in aspectual composition; this naturally poses a problem for (neo-)constructional approaches to inner aspect. Finally, one conclusion reached about the syntactic nature of inner aspect regards the object-to-event mapping: it is a purely syntactic phenomenon.
ESL learners often show great variation in article use. This study proposes that article use can be improved if the semantic feature (non)boundedness is introduced into ELT. This study argues that articles carry highly relevant information that is crucial, together with a number of other elements, for the signalling of aspectual values in English. It is argued that the signalling of aspectual values is the primary role of articles and that if ESL learners receive instruction on this role, they may learn how to signal aspectual values correctly, but also improve their article use thanks to a greater awareness of articles. The paper reports on an experiment conducted to test ESL learners’ response to such instruction and concludes that incorporating (non)boundedness into ESL instruction is both reasonable and necessary.
There is quite a high rate of acceptance of telic-perfective predicates as descriptions of non-culminating events in children learning Germanic and Romance languages. What causes children, much more so than adults, to accept non-culminating interpretations of telic-perfective sentences? In this review, I discuss learners’ difficulties in each of three grammatical dimensions that contribute to event culmination: the notion of ‘result’ as encoded in the lexical semantics of verbs, telicity of verb phrases, and perfectivity of tense-aspect morphology. I conclude that telicity and perfectivity do not cause the non-culmination acceptance patterns. Instead, the learnability challenge for event culmination lies in the acquisition of verb meanings. I sketch several new angles for further research, including the role of agentivity of the subject.
This paper focuses on the causative alternation and its compatibility with various types of dative arguments. I develop a novel constructivist analysis of the alternation, by which both the transitive causative and the unaccusative inchoative variants (Pablo broke the radio; The radio broke) are equally complex bi-eventive constructions. The resulting state (the broken radió) is shared by the two configurations while the higher sub-event distinguishes between the two. I argue that there exist two kinds of transitive predicates (causative and simple -non-causative) and two kinds of unaccusatives (inchoative and simple) which take part in distinct syntactic structures and, therefore, have different semantics. The proposal is able to account for systematic syntactic and semantic differences among dative arguments in simple transitive and unaccusative constructions, on the one hand, and causative and inchoative, on the other. The interaction between these two proposals sheds light on the relationship between syntax and semantics.
We present a unified account of the Spanish clitic se. We address the issue of the so called non-argument clitics, and the multiplicity of thematic roles these clitics might be able to participate in. We use the Generative Lexicon framework, in particular the notions of Event, Opposition Structure and Qualia roles.
This paper focuses on the causative alternation and its compatibility with various types of dative arguments. I develop a novel constructivist analysis of the alternation, by which both the transitive causative and the unaccusative inchoative variants (Pablo broke the radio; The radio broke) are equally complex bi-eventive constructions. The resulting state (the broken radio) is shared by the two configurations while the higher sub-event distinguishes between the two. I argue that there exist two kinds of transitive predicates (causative and simple-non-causative) and two kinds of unaccusatives (inchoative and simple) which take part in distinct syntactic structures and, therefore, have different semantics. The proposal is able to account for systematic syntactic and semantic differences among dative arguments in simple transitive and unaccusative constructions, on the one hand, and causative and inchoative, on the other. The interaction between these two proposals sheds light on the relationship between syntax and semantics.
The familiar Vendler-Kenny scheme of verb-types, viz., performances (further differentiated by Vedler into accomplishments and achievements), activities, and states, is too narrow in two important respects. First, it is narrow linguistically. It fails to take into account the phenomenon of verb aspect. The trichotomy is not one of verbs as lexical types but of predications. Second, the trichotomy is narrow ontologically. It is a specification in the context of human agency of the more fundamental, topic-neutral trichotomy, event-process-state.
The central component in this ontological trichotomy, event, can be sharply differentiated from its two flanking components by adapting a suggestion by Geoffrey N. Leech and others that the contrast between perfective and imperfective aspect in verbs corresponds to the count/mass distinction in the domain of nouns. With the help of two distinctions, of “cardinal count” adverbials versus frequency adverbials, and of occurrence versus associated occasion, two interrelated criteria for event predication are developed. Accordingly, “Mary capsized the boat” is an event predication because (a) it is equivalent to “There was at least one capsizing of the boat by Mary,” or (b) because it admits cardinal count adverbials, e.g., “at least once,” “twice,” “three times.” Ontologically speaking, events are defined as those occurrences that are inherently countable.
The ProblemInadequcies of the Earlier AnalysisTruth Conditions Relative to Intervals, Not MomentsTruth Conditions for the ProgressiveSome Problems with “Likeness” of WorldsExtending the Analysis to the “Futurate Progressive”Notes
On the Compositional Nature of the Aspects On some properties of French clitic se
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Complex predicates The perfective paradox: or how to eat your cake and have it too The Parameter of Aspect Spanish Modern Syntax Clitics in Spanish Grammaticalizing aspect and affectedness Linguistics and Philosophy
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