Understanding and Teaching Reflexive Sentences in Spanish

Luis H. González

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000574357
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachen

Understanding and Teaching Reflexive Sentences in Spanish provides a fresh, simple, and novel approach to understanding and teaching the use of the intransitivizing se.

Understanding reflexive sentences can be challenging for learners of Spanish. Instead of expecting learners to memorize multiple rules, the author offers one simple rule that allows learners to intuitively understand and use reflexive sentences. Sample exercises for students at all levels of language proficiency are also provided to practice and internalize the new approach.

This book will be of interest to teachers and learners of any second language, as well as linguists interested in second language acquisition or in second language teaching or pedagogy.

1Subject and direct object or verber and verbed?

DOI: 10.4324/9781003214090-1

1.1. Introduction

González (2021) provides ample evidence that children understand and use SUBJECT and DIRECT OBJECT in any sentence not because they have learned or have an implicit knowledge of these two grammatical relations. He argues that in a sentence like (1a) below, Ángela is expressed as the subject and a letter as the direct object because speakers are intuitively and implicitly computing two simple entailments: a VERBER ENTAILMENT and a VERBED ENTAILMENT. If (1a) is true, then, which of the sentences in (1b-e) are true?¹

(1) a. Ángela sent a letter.

b. Ángela was the sender.

c. #Ángela was the sent.^2

d. #A letter was the sender.

e. A letter was (the) sent.

If (1a) is true, the sentences in (1b,e) are also true. The sentence in (1b) is the VERBER ENTAILMENT; the one in (2e) is the VERBED ENTAILMENT. They are logical entailments that follow necessarily if (1a) is true. Of course, (1c,d) are not true if (1a) is true.

With the verber and verbed entailments, we understand why speakers of any language will say the equivalent of Linguists propose the coolest theories all the time and why no speaker says in any language the equivalent of *The coolest theories propose linguists all the time. The following section shows that verber and verbed are not just a different label for subject and direct object.

1.2. How verbed reveals a difference that subject hides

Let us now consider two sentences with just one participant. This participant is always the subject. However, we will see that the subject can be the verber or the verbed:

(2) a. Ángela studied.

b. Taxes were increased.

c. Taxes increased.

Let us apply the verber entailment and the verbed entailment to these sentences:

(3) a. Ángela is the studier (i.e. the student).

b. #Ángela is the studied.

c. #Taxes were the increaser.

d. Taxes were (the) increased.

It turns out that (3a) and (3d) are correct entailments from (2a-c). Those entailments show that the subject of (2a) is Ángela and she is the “studier” (student). They also show that taxes are the increased. Since the single participant in an intransitive sentence is the subject, observe that the subject of (2b,c) is the increased, not the increaser. That is, the VERBER ENTAILMENT and the VERBED ENTAILMENT show that the subject of a sentence can be the verber or the verbed.

Sentences (2a-c) are INTRANSITIVE because they have just one participant. It seems more appropriate to call sentences (2b,c) INTRANSITIVIZED than intransitive. These two sentences are a syntactic variation of the transitive sentence, the government increased taxes. The latter is the underlying sentence called the active voice sentence. Sentence (2b) is the passive voice alternation. We will call sentences like (2c) intransitivized sentences from now on.

Those familiar with scholarly work on reflexive sentences know that sentence (2c) is a DECAUSATIVE sentence (a sentence whose causer has been omitted). That term will not be used again until Chapter 5, where it will become clear for those unfamiliar with it.

TRANSITIVE: a sentence is transitive if it has a verber and a verbed (González 2021: 6).

INTRANSITIVE: a sentence is intransitive (or INTRANSITIVIZED) if it has just a verber or a verbed, but not both.

Now we are ready to propose that native speakers determine who or what is the subject and who or what is the direct object in a sentence by applying the following rule (González 2021: 6):

(4) Verber and Verbed Argument Selection Principle (VVASP):^3 The participant in a sentence that passes the verber entailment is expressed as the subject; the participant that passes the verbed entailment is expressed as the direct object of a transitive sentence, but as the subject of a sentence without a verber.

ARGUMENT is the specialized term in linguistics and philosophy for the “core” participants in a sentence. In terms of this book, verber, verbed, and verbee are the traditional arguments. Other participants are ADJUNTS. Arguments are presumably “selected” by the verb. Adjuncts are more freely added or deleted.

Up to this point, we have seen what transitive, intransitive, and intransitivized sentences are. A transitive sentence has a verber and a verbed; an intransitive sentence has a verber or a verbed, but not both; an intransitivized sentence is a sentence from which either its verber or its verbed was omitted. An important point of this way of understanding subject and direct object is that the subject of an intransitive (or an intransitivized) sentence can be the verber or the verbed, a difference that the notion of subject has blurred for over 21 centuries. For example, the subject of all sentences in the passive voice is a verbed. The subject of UNACCUSATIVE verbs (belong, cost, happen, matter, occur, remain, seem, etc.) is the verbed. See González (2021: Chapter 5), for a discussion of the true gustar verbs in Spanish (the equivalent in Spanish of verbs like belong, happen, etc.). As this book shows, the subject of sentences with a “reflexive” pronoun is the verbed or the verbee.

UNACCUSATIVE verbs are verbs whose only object has to be an indirect object, like pertenecer ‘belong’, gustar ‘like’, ocurrir ‘happen/occur’, etc. They are verberless, but not subjectless. In the absence of a verber in a sentence, the verbed is “promoted” to subject position. See González (2021: Chapters 4 and 5).

1.3. Sentences with three participants

Consider now sentence (5) in English:

(5) We sent Grandma our children.

It is uncontroversial who the sender is (we). Is it clear who the sent is? Is Grandma the sent or are the children the sent? Sentences (6a,b) will help readers who are not sure. The sentence in (5) is synonymous only with one of them:

(6) a. We sent our children to Grandma.

b. #We sent Grandma to our children.

Sentences (5) and (6a) are synonymous. The sent in (5) and in (6a) are the children. Then, who or what is Grandma? Grandma is the beneficiary of the event of sending someone to her. Grandma is the beneficiary not only in (6a) but also in (5).

As González (2021:...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Subject and direct object or verber and verbed?
• 2 Turning reflexivization on its head
• 3 How the intransitivizing se accounts for true reflexive se, but not the other way around
• 4 Other “functions” of se: Can telling your name in another language be an idiom?
• 5 Bringing together coreference reflexives, decausative reflexives, impersonal passives, and inherently reflexive verbs
• Index