Transitivity and Spanish Non-Anaphoric se

Abstract

In the languages of the world, it is not uncommon to find reflexive pronouns taking on other functions. Indeed, the reflexive pronoun is a widespread source for passive-voice constructions in several language families (Semitic, Uto-Aztecan, Athabaskan and Carib languages; see Givón, 1990: 602 and references therein). In Romance and non-Romance European languages (for example the Germanic languages), we find the reflexive pronoun as a marker of the passive and/or middle voice (Abraham, 1995; Fagan, 1992; Vater, 1988).1 In Spanish, the reflexive pronoun marks not only middle and passive voice, but also appears as a marker in impersonal and antipassive constructions (Masullo, 1992), serves as an aspectual marker on verbs of various sorts (see Hernández, 1966: 50), and accompanies certain other verbs where it co-varies with markers of definiteness and foregrounded material. And although it seems that this wide variety of non-anaphoric functions of Spanish se is quite disparate, this chapter presents a unified analysis of non-anaphoric se. With 'unified' we mean here that by appealing to a single notion, that of Transitivity as proposed by Hopper and Thompson (1980), the basic function of non-anaphoric se can be accounted for.2 That is, the various functions of Spanish non-anaphoric se are all, essentially, a function of Transitivity.