Logos

CONSTRUCTIONcon.spa.se-reflexivo

construcción reflexiva

A pattern in which a clitic agreeing with the subject fills an object position, stating that the participant acting and the participant acted on are the same.

The clitic occupies the object position and is coreferent with the subject, so the clause has two argument positions and one participant. Unlike the anticausative, the construction removes nothing: the verb keeps the participant structure it has elsewhere and the pattern is available to any transitive verb whose meaning tolerates one entity in both roles. Two consequences follow. The clitic inflects for person and number across the whole paradigm rather than being frozen in the third person, which is the mechanical test that separates this pattern from the impersonal and the passive uses of the same shape. And a stressed phrase headed by a can be added to insist on the reading, which is the ordinary way of resolving a plural clause that would otherwise be read as reciprocal.

statusstatus
documentedasserted, and the sources agree
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 construction
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
frequentit is stored because it recurs often enough to be learned whole

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 sujeto, que es a la vez agente y pacientepositional: 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

  2. 1el clítico reflexivo, concordado en persona y número con el sujetolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

    fillerslots[].filler
    functionslots[].fn
    FUNCTIONcomplemento directofun.spa.complemento-directo

  3. 2el verbo transitivo, finitolexically specified: only the fillers below may occupy it

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

Slot template

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

  1. el sujeto, que es a la vez agente y paciente
    positional

    no lexical filler — this slot marks a position only

    names sujeto

  2. el clítico reflexivo, concordado en persona y número con el sujeto
    constrained
    • clítico reflexivoclass

    names complemento directo

  3. el verbo transitivo, finito
    constrained
    • verboclass

    names núcleo

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

via

edges.via

this realizer, this way

this object realizes

derives

edges.derives

the why-chain

derived by