Unraveling the complexity of SE (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 99)

This book makes a novel contribution to our understanding of Romance SE constructions by combining both diachronic and synchronic theoretical perspectives along with a range of empirical data from different languages and dialects. The collection, divided into four sections, proposes that SE constructions may be divided into one class that is the result of grammaticalization of a reflexive pronoun up the syntactic tree, from Voice and above, and another class that has resulted from the reanalysis of reflexive and anticausative morphemes as an argument expletive or verbal morpheme generated in positions from Voice and below. The contributions, while varied in both empirical content and theoretical approach, all serve to highlight different aspects of the overarching idea that SE constructions have evolved from these two distinct grammaticalization paths. The book appeals to researchers and academics in the field and closes with a unified approach to various SE constructions that makes important use of its status as a verbal morpheme. In addition to aligning a novel string of empirical contributions under a new theoretical umbrella, a clear research direction emerges from this volume based on the morphosyntactic nature of SE itself: Is it a clitic, an agreement morpheme, or a verbal morpheme? Preface Contents About The Editors A Guide to Understanding SE Constructions: Where They Come from and How They Are Connected 1 Introduction 1.1 Diachronic Perspectives 1.2 Voice/Little v and Above 1.3 Voice/Little v and Below 1.4 A Unifying Perspective 2 Voice/Little v and Diverging Paths 2.1 Voice/Little v and Reflse 2.2 The Path Above Voice/Little v 2.3 The Path Below Voice/Little v 2.4 Summary and Open Questions References Part I: Diachronic Perspectives The Development of Se from Latin to Spanish and the Reflexive Object Cycle 1 Introduction 2 The Object Agreement Cycle (OAC) 2.1 Object Pronouns > Object Agreement 2.2 Reflexive Object Cycle 3 Clitic Doubling as a Grammaticalization Diagnostic 3.1 Background 3.2 Object Clitic Doubling 3.3 Intrasystemic Diachrony 4 The Categorial Status of Se and the Stages of the Reflexive Object Cycle 4.1 Stage (a): Latin 4.1.1 Background 4.1.2 Distribution 4.2 Stage (a) Moving to Stage (b): Old Spanish (1200-1400) 4.2.1 Distribution 4.2.2 Auxiliary Selection 4.3 Stage (b): Middle Spanish (1400-1600) 4.3.1 Loss of Interpolation 4.3.2 Auxiliary Selection 4.4 Stage (c): Modern Spanish (1600-Present) 4.4.1 Se as Agreement 5 Doubling with Se Diachronically 5.1 Middle Spanish 5.2 Modern Spanish 6 The Reflexive Object (Se) Cycle in Three Stages 7 Conclusion References Null-Subjects and se Revisited: What Medieval Romance Varieties Reveal 1 Introduction 2 Se, Its Morpho-Syntactic Nature and Null Subjects 2.1 Earlier Accounts 2.2 More Recent Accounts 2.3 A Note on Null-Subjects and Null-Subjects in Medieval French 3 Passive > Impersonal 3.1 The Corpus 3.2 Results 4 How Does se Evolve to Be a Marker of Impersonality? 5 Conclusion and Further Lines of Investigation References Cited Corpora Part II: Voice/Little v and Above On (Un)Grammatical Clitic Sequences in Impersonal se Constructions 1 Introduction 2 The Honduran Clitic System 3 Previous Accounts 3.1 Mendikoetxea and Battye (1990) 3.2 Ordóñez and Treviño (2016) 4 Clustering With Impse 5 Same Underlying Structure, Different Clitics 6 DM Mechanics and the Features in Play 6.1 Definite Feature of Direct Object lo(s)/la(s) 6.2 Valued [D] on T 6.3 The DM Mechanics 6.4 Potentially Problematic Data 7 Brief Recap References Implicit Agents and the Person Constraint on SE-Passives 1 Introduction 2 The Person Constraint on SE-Passives 2.1 The Data 2.2 The Person Constraint on SE-Middles 2.3 Previous Accounts of the Person Constraint on SE-Passives 3 The Initiator in Passives 3.1 Where Is the Initiator in Passives? 3.2 The Phi-Features of the Initiator in Acehnese Passives: Legate (2012, 2014) 3.3 No phiP in SE-Passives 3.4 Summary 4 Valued Phi-Features and Implicit Initiators Across Passive Configurations 4.1 Phi-Features and Case-Checking in Active Configurations 4.2 Phi-Features and Case-Checking in Participle Passives 4.3 Phi-Features and Case-Checking in Anticausatives 4.4 Phi-Features and Case-Checking in SE-Passives 4.5 Summary 5 Agentivity Tests in Passives 6 Conclusions and Consequences References On the Nature of the Impersonal SE: Why Italian is not like Catalan and Spanish 1 Introduction 2 On the Single Nominative Impersonal Se 3 Evidence for an Empty Pronoun in Impersonal se: Case, Control and Adverbs 4 The Interpretation of Impersonal se in Catalan, Spanish and Italian 4.1 Generic Interpretation 4.2 Existential Interpretation or Episodic Interpretation 4.3 Distribution of Different Readings: Generic, Existential and WE 5 Conclusion References Personal se with Unergatives in Romanian 1 Introduction 2 Data 3 Râde: (In)voluntary Reading 4 Antipassives 4.1 Masullo (1992) 4.2 Antipassives in Romanian 5 (In)transitivity Frames 5.1 Involuntary Râde 5.2 Voluntary Râde 5.3 Problems with Other Complex Predicate Analyses 5.3.1 Armstrong (2013) 5.3.2 MacDonald ́s Studies 6 Derivations 6.1 Râde without se 6.2 Dative Reflexive râde 6.3 Râde with Redundant Se: Human Subjects and CLLD 7 Proposal 8 Conclusions References Part III: Voice/Little v and Below On a Class of Figure Reflexives in Romanian: Ion se spală pe mâini `John washes his hands ́ 1 Introduction 1.1 Figure Reflexive Constructions 1.2 Goals of the Paper 1.3 Proposal 2 Transitive Figure Reflexives: Empirical Properties 2.1 The Dative Paraphrase 2.2 Transitivity 2.3 Agentivity 2.4 Restriction to Inalienable Possession 2.5 Possession Expressed Metonymically 2.6 Selection of the Body-Part Preposition 2.7 Affectedness 3 Transitive Figure-Ground Reflexive: Syntactic Analysis 4 Extending the Analysis: Unaccusative Figure Reflexive Constructions 4.1 The Data 4.2 On the Role of the PP in the Anticausative Construction 4.3 Non-agentivity 4.4 No Dative Paraphrase 4.5 Syntactic Derivation 5 More on the Anticausative Alternation 5.1 Older Confirmed Results 5.2 More Recent Results 5.3 No External Argument 5.4 More on the Anticausative Alternation with Degree Achievements 6 Conclusions References Causative SE: A Transitive Analysis 1 Introduction 2 Properties of the Causative se Construction 3 Complex/Simplex Reflexive Constructions and Causative se 4 Analysis 5 Concluding Remarks References Light Verbs and the Syntactic Configurations of se 1 Introduction 2 Poner(se) and quedar(se): The Data 3 The Proposal 3.1 Overview of the Theoretical Framework 3.2 Quedar and Change-of-State quedarse 3.3 Stative quedarse 3.4 Poner(se) 3.5 Quedar + Participles 4 Conclusions References The Role of SE and NE in Romance Verbs of Directed Motion: Evidence from Catalan, Italian, Aragonese and Spanish Varieties 1 Introduction 2 Pronominal Verbs of Directed Motion in Romance Languages 2.1 The Clitic se 2.2 The Clitic Cluster se + ne 3 On the Role of se and ne with Verbs of Directed Motion 4 On the Status of ne 5 Accounting for Inter- and Intralinguistic Variation 6 Conclusions References Scalar Constraints on Anticausative SE: The Aspectual Hypothesis Revisited 1 Introduction 2 The Aspectual Hypothesis Revisited 3 The Data 3.1 Variable Aspectual Behavior Verbs 3.2 Preliminary Conclusions 3.3 Achievements 3.3.1 Aspectual se 3.4 Preliminary Conclusions Revised 4 Analysis 4.1 AspP and DegP 4.2 Se/Ø as Unaccusativity Markers: Voice or v? 4.3 Spell Out Conditions on v 5 Conclusions References Part IV: A Unifying Perspective Spanish se as a High and Low Verbalizer 1 Introduction 2 Assumptions About Clause Structure 3 The Anticausative 4 The Reflexive 4.1 Ditransitive Reflexives 5 Antipassive 6 Extending the Analysis: Unaccusative Doublets 6.1 Low Applicatives 7 The Unergative: Se as a Low Verbalizer 8 Conclusion References