Analyzing the uses of the reflexive clitic SE in Romance.

For the (morpho-)syntactic realization of SE, see RomClitics. This page addresses problems at the syntax/semantics interface.

General remarks

  • The term SE encompasses 5 surface forms: 1st or 2nd x sing (e.g. Spanish me, te), 1st or 2nd plur (nos, os) + 3rd sing/plur (se).
  • same form for accusative and dative (sometimes impossible to resolve, for inherently reflexive verbs)
  • special form in 3rd person (no sing/plur distinction) but not in 1st/2nd person

Special remarks for French

  • SE (in all uses) is incompatible with the verb avoir (temporal auxiliary or main verb ‘have’), induces auxiliary switch (to être) in compound tenses.

    Ex. Je lui ai dit, il m’a dit (I told her, he told me) but Je me suis dit, il s’est dit (I told myself, he told himself)

  • Only accusative SE triggers past participle agreement (primarily orthographic convention).

    Ex. Elles se sont rencontrées (They met each other) but Elles se sont parlé (They talked to each other)

Special remarks for Portuguese

This is not a special remark about Portuguese, but a hint for a paper that addresses the exact issue of the present page from the perspective of computational grammar (it’s about Spanish, but its results can to a large extent be extrapolated to other languages):

Randy Sharp, 2005, “A Unified Treatment of Spanish se”. In Branco, McEnery and Mitkov (eds)Anaphora Processing: Linguistic, Cognitive and Computational Modelling. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, isbn9027247773, pp.113-138.

Special remarks for Spanish

Semantic SE

i.e., reflexive/reciprocal SE

common properties

  • realization of an accusative or dative complement
  • receives the semantic role associated with that complement
  • alternates with non-reflexive accusative or dative clitics/NPs/PPs
  • alternates with strong reflexive pronouns

Semantic SE in French

se laver (acc), se parler (dat)

examples and language specific properties, implemented or planned analysis

Semantic SE in Portuguese

Semantic SE in Spanish

Expletive SE

aka “inherent SE”

common properties

  • lexically specified but assigned no semantic role (expletive)
  • accusative (rarely dative, e.g. French se plaire)
  • does not alternate with non-reflexive complements (or change in word sense)
  • does not alternate/co-occur with strong reflexive pronoun

Expletive SE in French

se taire, se suicider

  • Normative rule: SE triggers past participle agreement (i.e., analyzed as accusative)

    Les voix se sont tues/*tu. (The voices-fem fell silent) currently enforced in the grammar (perhaps should apply strictly only for generation)

  • But, the caused agent in the faire-causative is generally accusative, not dative (as expected when the embedded verb is transitive):

    L’auteur fait se suicider (*à) son personnage (The author makes his character kill himself)

Possible cases of dative expletive SE: se dire se demander (sense shift: ‘tell oneself –> think’, ‘ask oneself –> wonder’)

Expletive SE in Portuguese

Expletive SE in Spanish

Mediopassive SE

common properties

  • passive-like demotion of active subject and promotion of accusative complement
  • impossibility of agentive by-phrase

Mediopassive SE in French

se vendre

Mediopassive SE in Portuguese

Mediopassive SE in Spanish

Other uses?

E.g., melt/break/sink alternations

  • how productive?
  • how regular?
  • how to analyze…?

Last update: 2007-06-29 by JesseTseng [edit]