Towards a comprehensive meaning for the non-actantial reflexive dative in Spanish
Year: 2004
Type: article
Abstract: Within the group of the non-actantial reflexive datives, we first analyse two well-known classes, namely the possessive dative and the benefactive dative. We show that their classification is not as straightforward as could be expected. The remaining group of non-actantial reflexive datives - the most problematic one - expresses neither a possessive, nor a benefactive relationship. This group includes reflexive constructions such as comerse algo, conocerse a alguien, encontrarse a alguien, lemerse algo. The purpose of this paper is to set up a hypothesis for the appearance of se in the latter group. We propose that the non-actantial dative se stands for the increased involvement of the subject into the overall process by means of doubling the role the subject plays in the process. This double role obeys objective and/or subjective criteria. In the former case, the reflexive marker is imposed by the syntactic and semantic requirements of the construction itself; in the latter case, the presence of se is due to the conceptual representation of the process the speaker is giving himself. It is further shown that this hypothesis also holds for non-actantial possessive and benefactive reflexive datives, as well as for se appearing with monoactantial verbs.
Authors: Gretel De Cuyper, Ludo Melis
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W60200306