REFLEXIVE
& PSEUDO-REFLEXIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN SPANISH
A reflexive construction is
one involving one of the clitics me, te, se, nos, or os when this is co-referential
with the subject of the verb, as in Pedro
se lava ‘Pedro washes himself’. Such constructions are extraordinarily
frequent in Spanish and are associated with quite a wide range of meanings.
The most usual effect of
making a verb reflexive is to render it intransitive and simultaneously to
promote to subject position the item that would be expected to occupy direct
object position were the verb to be used non-reflexively:
(1) [SUBJ El
buque] se hundió. (Compare Hundieron el
buque.)
‘The ship sank.’
(2) Se destruyeron [SUBJ
más de diez casas] . (Compare Destruyeron más de diez casas.)
‘More than ten houses were destroyed.’
(3) No se oye [SUBJ
el ruido de la calle]. (Compare Oyen
el ruido de la calle.)
‘You don’t hear the noise
from the street.’
(4) [SUBJ El
niño] se alimenta de leche. (Compare Alimentan
al niño con leche.)
‘The boy feeds on milk.’
(5) [SUBJ El
niño] sabe vestirse a sí mismo. (Compare María
viste al niño.)
‘The boy knows how to dress
himself.’
As was just mentioned, the
reflexive construction expresses a wide variety of meanings. Thus sentence (1)
is rendered in English using a so-called ‘ergative’ verb (i.e. a verb that can
be used with the item in the ’patient’ (i.e. ‘undergoer’)
role occupying either subject or object position), (2) illustrates the
so-called ‘reflexive-passive’ construction, (3) is translated using impersonal you,
(4) is translated using a pseudo-intransitive verb (with an agentive subject , i.e.
a subject that is a ‘doer’ rather than an ‘undergoer’)
and (5) is translated using the English reflexive construction, which has a
much lower frequency than its Spanish counterpart. The exact value of the
Spanish reflexive form in any given case depends upon the meaning of the items
occupying the relevant positions in the sentence, which are usually the subject
NP and the verb.
A variant effect of the
reflexive construction is to indicate that the subject is simultaneously an
agent and a benefactive,
i.e. an individual who ‘benefits from’ the action or is indirectly affected by
it. This construction is particularly common when the direct object refers to a
body part as in (6), but it has a wider applicability as (7) illustrates:
(6) Pedro se lavó
las manos.
‘Pedro washed his hands.’
(7) Pedro se compró
una casa.
‘Pedro bought himself a
house.’
The
Spanish reflexive construction represents the most common vehicle for
expressing what in English is expressed using a passive sentence. Unlike ‘true’
passive sentences, however, reflexives do not readily admit por-phrases referring to the
agent. For example, Los libros fueron vendidos
por el librero
‘The books were sold by the book-seller’ would be acceptable but not Los libros se vendieron por el librero (unless por el librero means ‘because of the
book-seller’). Agentive por-phrases are not completely unknown with the reflexive ‘passive’, however. Pountain gives the
following example: El más
antiguo tratado de trigonometría esférica escrita en el mundo se escribió precisamente por un cadí
o un juez de Jaén ‘The
oldest treatise on spherical trigonometry written in the world was indeed
written by a cadi or judge from Jaén.’
Such cases seem to be lexically conditioned, with a handful of verbs, such as escribir and publicar, accounting for the majority of examples.
A number of Spanish verbs
are inherently reflexive, although as there are no corresponding non-reflexive
forms the reflexive marking is devoid of meaning in this type of case. For
example, there are no forms *quejar
and *arrepentir corresponding to
the verbs quejarse ‘to complain’
and arrepentirse ‘to regret’,
which are illustrated in (8) and (9) below:
(8) Pedro se
quejó del servicio.
‘Pedro complained about the
service.’
(9) Pedro se
arrepiente de su mal humor.
‘Pedro regrets his bad
mood.’
Some verbs are inherently
reflexive in certain senses. For example, acordarse
means ‘to remember’ but acordar means ‘to agree on’.
In spoken Spanish it is
common to combine the reflexive construction with representation of an experiencer (an individual that experiences some pyschological state) or a patient by means of an indirect
object, as in (10) and (11) below (the base verbs are olvidar ‘to forget’ and caer
‘to fall’):
(10) Se [IO me] olvidó [SUBJ la bufanda].
‘I forgot my scarf.’
(11) Se [IO me]
cayó [SUBJ
un plato].
‘I dropped a plate.’
Now the reflexive construction proper, as just described,
must be distinguished from the pseudo-reflexive construction, which is
illustrated by (12) and (13) below:
(12) Se vive bien en
España.
‘Life is pleasant in
Spain.’
(13) Se denunció a los
directores.
‘Someone reported the
directors.’
Without se, the two
sentences above would have to be understood as having latent subjects: compare
<María> vive bien
en España and <María>
denunció a los directores. On the other hand, the function of se
is to supply a kind of dummy subject expression. Thus there can be no question
of se being ‘co-referential’ with the item in subject position, as se
itself is that expression. Accordingly, (12) and (13) are not really reflexive
sentences at all.
This use of the pseudo-reflexive construction is
blocked, in standardized Peninsular Spanish, when the verb takes a prepositionless object NP. Thus a formulation such as *Se ve casas, where se
is the would-be dummy subject of ve ‘sees’, is considered ungrammatical. (The corresponding
reflexive construction is perfectly grammatical, however, viz. Se ven casas ‘Houses can be seen’, where casas is the subject of the verb ven and so agrees
with it in number.)
There is geographical
variation, however, and the Spanish used in certain parts of Latin America may
reflect an incipient merging of reflexive and pseudo-reflexive se.
Sentence (14) below, for example, which appeared in a Buenos Aires daily
newspaper, has pseudo-reflexive se as
the verb’s subject (the NP las características is ruled out as a candidate for subject
in view of its plurality) and yet the verb is followed by a prepositionless
object:
(14) [SUBJ Se]
señaló [DO las características que deberá tener el proyecto].
‘The characteristics were
highlighted that the project will have to have.’
And, even in the Peninsula, the presence of an auxiliary
verb may attenuate the prescriptive norm. Thus some educated speakers may find
sentences such as the following perfectly grammatical: Se puede fumar cigarros ‘One can smoke cigars’, Se suele beber licores ‘Spirits are normally drunk’, Se debe discutir tales propuestas
‘Such proposals should be discussed’ (see Alarcos Llorach Grámatica de la
lengua española, p.
262, Espasa-Calpe: Madrid, 1994).
A further quirk of the pseudo-reflexive se construction, in standard Peninsular Spanish at least, is that
it triggers a near-obligatory leísmo. In other words, when the direct object is an
anaphoric clitic pronoun that has a masculine NP as
its antecedent, usually only le or les is possible, not lo or los:
(15) Se le(s) denunció. (Not
Se lo(s) denunció.)[1]
‘Someone reported
him/them.’
(16) Se le(s) oyó llegar. (Not *Se lo(s) oyó
llegar.)
‘Someone heard him/them
arriving.’
Matters are again likely to
be different on the other side of the Atlantic. For example, the following
sentence fragment is from a linguistics textbook by an Argentine author: En América se los encuentra en Nuevo
México, México, Costa Rica … ‘In America one finds them in New Mexico, Mexico,
Costa Rica …’.
As regards the placement of
se in finite + non-finite sequences,
reflexive se enjoys the same latitude as the other clitic
pronouns, but pseudo-reflexive se can never be enclitic:
|
Reflexive: |
Van a conocerse./Se van a
conocer. ‘They’re going to meet each other.’ |
|
Pseudo-reflexive: |
Se puede vivir bien en España but not *Puede vivirse bien en España. ‘You can live well in Spain.’ |
[1] Se lo(s)
denunció is of course a grammatical sequence, but
it means something quite different, viz. ‘<He/She> reported it/them to
him/her/them’, with se as a sandhi form of le
or les.