Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.pasiva-refleja

pasiva refleja

A pattern in which a third person reflexive clitic stands before a verb that agrees with the affected participant, giving an event stated without any agent at all.

Two analyses of this pattern are in the field and they disagree about what the affected phrase is. On the first, the phrase is the subject: the verb copies its number, agreement is the only subject test the language offers, and the construction is therefore a passive built with a clitic instead of a copula. On the second, the phrase is the direct object of an impersonal clause and the number copying is a superficial accommodation, which explains why speakers accept a singular verb beside a plural phrase in some varieties and why the pattern shades continuously into the impersonal one. The graph records the first analysis as the convention it adopts, because agreement is the test every other record in it uses, and marks the record contested because the second analysis is held by named reference grammars about this same pattern. No agent phrase is admissible under either reading, which is the one point of agreement and the sharpest difference from the periphrastic passive.

statusstatus
contestedasserted, and the sources disagree
provenanceprovenance
authoredwritten for Logos, from first principles
derivation statusderivation_status
unstatednobody has said whether it follows from anything
saliencesalience
No salience. Where no frequency source applies the object carries none, rather than a default or a guess (03-schema.md §3.5).
aliasesaliases
  • metalanguagereflexive passive
sourcessources
  • SOURCENueva gramática de la lengua española (2009)src.nueva-gramaticano page in v1
  • SOURCEA New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish (Butt and Benjamin)src.butt-benjaminno page in v1

Why this is a construction at all

construction.admission

Goldberg's admission test: a template earns storage either by being unpredictable or by being frequent.

admissionadmission
unpredictableit is stored because its meaning does not follow from its parts

The slots

construction.slots

At least two, by the schema: fewer is not a multi-element template. Every filler is a link, never a name in prose.

  1. 0el clítico se, invariable y de tercera personalexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    No function is assigned to this slot.

  2. 1el verbo finito, en tercera personalexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONnúcleofun.spa.nucleo

  3. 2el participante afectado, con el que el verbo concuerda en númeropositional: this slot is a place in the string, not a lexical requirement

    fillerslots[].filler
    No filler is named. For a positional slot that is the correct reading; for a lexical one it is a gap.
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONsujetofun.spa.sujeto

Slot template

3 slots: 2 constrained, 1 positional, 2 naming a grammatical function.

  1. el clítico se, invariable y de tercera persona
    constrained
    • clítico reflexivoclass
  2. el verbo finito, en tercera persona
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

  3. el participante afectado, con el que el verbo concuerda en número
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names sujeto

Confusable with

construction.confusable

Objects a reader is likely to mix up with this one, and the difference that separates them. The edge is symmetric and stored once, so this renders on both objects' pages from the one statement.

Everything joined to this object

One group per typed edge, in both directions. A1b guarantees no object node is an orphan, so this is the whole navigation: an object with no edges would have failed the build rather than reached this page.

What this object is a kind of

Walking this object's own `is-a` edges: what it is a kind of. Several branches from one object are several classification axes, not competing supertypes.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

Fan-out per dimension

A4

One row per dimension, largest first. That is a display order, not a verdict: 03-schema.md declares no threshold above which fan-out is too much, so this reports the count and grades nothing.

  • case13 values
  • mood8 values
  • voice8 values
  • aspect7 values
  • aktionsart6 values
  • number6 values
  • person6 values
  • tense6 values
  • comparison4 values
  • evidentiality4 values
  • gender4 values
  • politeness4 values
  • valency4 values
  • animacy3 values
  • definiteness3 values
  • deixis3 values
  • finiteness2 values
  • information structure2 values
  • interrogativity2 values
  • polarity2 values
  • switch-reference2 values

What kinds of this object there are

Walking the `is-a` edges that point at this object: what kinds of it there are. An object reachable two ways is drawn in both places and is still one object.

objects
1
places drawn
1
multi-parent
None in this view. This subgraph happens to be a tree, which the explorer draws as one without assuming it is one.

Siblings are listed by name, then by id to break ties. That is a display choice made here and not an order the graph asserts.

has-a

edges.has-a

the parent carries this

this object carries

selects

edges.selects

the parent requires this elsewhere

this object requires, elsewhere

  • CATEGORYpluralcat.pluraldocumented
    • conditionThe verb copies the number of the affected phrase, so a plural phrase forces a plural verb; this agreement is the whole evidence for calling the phrase a subject.

via

edges.via

this realizer, this way

this object realizes

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by