Direct and Indirect Objects in Spanish Se-impersonal Clauses

Professor: Michel Achard LING 551: Seminar in Cognitive GrammarDecember, 10th 2009

Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009

¿A la policía se la respeta y a las cucarachas se les mata con ácido bórico?1

—Direct and indirect objects in Spanish se-impersonal clauses. A cognitive-

functional account—.

1. Reflexiveness, middle voice, and the defocusing of the subject /agent.

The variety of uses of the traditionally called "reflexive pronoun" se in Spanish is

overwhelming. It covers uses that go from the strictly co-referential ones as in:

(1) Juan se dio una cachetada para volver en sí. (Juan slapped himself to come back to his senses)

To uses that have been called "aspectual" because the way in which they change the

internal process of the verb, like the following:

(2) Juan se leyó el periódico en un santiamén. (Juan read the whole newspaper in a jiffy)

In this paper, I will start by focusing on a very productive use of this clitic, the so-called

impersonal se. Once the notion of impersonality and the role of the clitic se have been

clarified, I will turn to the problem of the alternation between indirect and direct objects

(IO and DO, respectively) in those se-impersonal clauses, as in the following apparently

synonymous sentences:

(3) A la policía IO se le IO respeta. (Police must be respected.)

(4) A la policía DO se la DO respeta. (Police must be respected.)

I want to propose that the alternation between the IO and DO is the result of the

conceptual re-accommodation of more basic prototypical relations between participants

1 "Must police be respected, and are roaches killed with boric acid?" There's no intended pun in the combination of these two sentences, although, as I hope to demonstrate, they are, in a related way, odd constructions in my variety of Spanish.

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009and events. In this regard, I follow Langacker's fundamental notion of construal, defined

as "our manifest ability to conceive and portray the same situation in alternate ways."

(2008: 43). There's a powerful reason why, in the context of a sentence involving the verb

respetar, sometimes the IO is preferred over the more "logical" direct object, which

seems to be more natural in decontextualized basic active sentences such as (5), which

clearly uses an DO, as (6) shows:

(5) Juan respeta a los ancianos. (Juan respects the elderly)

(6) Juan los respeta. (Juan respects them)

Basically, I want to provide an explanation to this kind of sentences by assuming that

every grammatical element in the clause is meaningful, and that the selection of the IO

over the DO is not necessarily the product of a normative zeal, but the result of the

cognitive flexibility of speakers that make use of the meaning of the IO structure

1.1 Reflexiveness and the middle voice

Shibatani (2006) presents the middle voice as a meaning that is focused on one of the

areas of the evolutionary properties of an action; in other words, actions (prototypically

transitive events) are conceived as having three stages: origin, development, and

termination, and the middle voice stresses the fact that the development of an action "is

confined within the agent's personal sphere, so that the actions effects accrues on the

agent itself." (Shibatani 2006: 234; my emphasis). The notion of "personal sphere" is a

crucial one, and has been deliberately left broadly (un)defined in Shibatani's paper. This

means that the agent (or the instigator of the event, in more general terms) applies its

energy to an event that remains contained in its self. The commonality of every middle

construction is that whatever we consider the source of the action has to involve its

origin, either as an endpoint (reflexiveness) or as a container affected by its own energy.

In Shibatani's view, most prototypical middle constructions, such as inchoative,

spontaneous, anticausatives, etc. fall into this view, but more importantly, also Kemmer's

(1993: 73) one-participant events (intransitive verbs) are middle forms, which means that

those intransitive forms are, in contrasting to transitive ones, part of a universal voice

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009opposition between active and middle Shibatani 2006: 237). To sum up, if an action

doesn't go beyond its instigator, then it is considered a middle form. It will depend on the

nature of the event, and, of course, the nature of the participants in the event, what kind

of middle construction will obtain.

Maldonado (1999: 18-25) has proposed in his exhaustive examination of the syntax and

semantics of the clitic se that its reflexive use should be distinguished from the middle

ones. To summarize his perspective, those uses of se in sentences that provide a clear

distinction between subject and object, due to their high degree of elaboration of the

actions chain (Cf. Langacker 2008: 355-356), are to be considered reflexive forms. For

instance, a sentence like (7)

(7) Juan se imaginó (a sí mismo) besando a Megan Fox. (Juan imagined himself kissing Megan Fox.)

has a high level of elaboration because the verb imaginar introduces a mental space in

which the action of the subject is view as independent from those of the imagined object.

This duplication of the same person in two different spaces produces a case of identity,

but also a clear differentiation (Juansubj. in the real world, and Juanobj. in the imagined

one). This allows the presence of the emphatic for a sí mismo, which points to the action

having a legitimate transfer from a subject to a (co-referential) object.

Also, according to Maldonado (1999: 75-80), for verbs that assign the subject a high level

of control (i.e. the agent has command over the development of the event), the

distinction between subject and object is clear, thereby allowing the use of se in a

reflexive way (see example 8). On the other hand, a low level of control produces a

middle voice, which precludes a co-referential reflexive meaning (as stressed by a mí

mismo in 9):

(8) Yo me entiendo a mí mismo. (I understand myself)

(9) ?? Yo me duermo a mí mismo. (I sleep myself)

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009Example (9) allows me to introduce what are considered middle constructions in Spanish.

Without the explicit (odd) co-referentiality, (9) equals Yo me dormí ("I fell asleep"), an

event in which the inductive energy is not transferred towards an external object. The

energy, thus, remains in the subject, who is an experiencer with no control over the event,

and the change of state (the change from being awake to being asleep) is profiled. Still,

verbs like dormirse ("to fall asleep") have a clear subject that is the origin of the action:

the inductive energy, although not consciously controlled by the subject, is still

identifiable as a (normal) part of the capabilities of the subject. Maldonado (1999: 282-

283), contrast this situation with what he considers the prototypical middle constructions

in Spanish: middles of terminal prominence (MTP). In these constructions anything can

be considered the instigator of the event: an undetermined external force (typically of

atmospheric nature, as in 10), or an undefined internal situation related to a spontaneous

event (as in 11), or an auto-induced event, usually related to machines (like 12), among

other equivalent situations:

(10) La puerta se cerró (con el viento). ("The door closed")

(11) El globo se reventó. ("The balloon blew")

(12) Se encendió la alarma. ("The alarm went off")

The crucial idea advanced here by Maldonado (1999: 24) is that this kind of middle

constructions reveals an important function of se concerning the subject of the clause: se

decreases the level of elaboration, as well as the inductive force of the subject. This

means, first, that the subject of a MTP is schematic in nature; and; second, that as

induction decreases, the prominence of the state change, the terminal part of an event,

increases. In other words, an MTP is a form of subject defocusing, which, in terms of

Langacker (2006:129-130),

… restricts the profile to the patient's change of state … So restricted, it evokes an unprofiled agent with varying degrees of salience and may exclude it altogether … The change may then be construed as spontaneous.

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009This implies that a MTP the elaboration of the event has been reduced, since now the

contrast between subject and object is not as relevant. What the speaker conveys is an

event in which the initial state triggered by the subject is of reduced importance (it is still

there, as some form of schematic inductive energy), while the terminal portion, the

change of state, is central in the message (Maldonado 1999: 270). These ideas seem to

leave the path open to the notion of impersonality as a form of "agent defocusing" or

"schematic induction". However, this doesn't come without some complications.

1.2. Defocusing of the agent as impersonality: some issues

As it has already been hinted, the notion of MTP is of great relevance for the analysis of

the so-called se-impersonal constructions. For instance, upon observation of the

following two sentences, it is clear that although both have set the focus on the terminal

part of an event elaboration, they have a different way of presenting the inductive force in

schematic terms.

(13) Se rompió la copa. (The glass broke)

(14) Se rompe la copa luego del brindis. (After the toast, the glass must be broken)

In (13) the inductive force producing the breaking event is not determined, regarding all

the possible inductive forces compatible with the event. If something breaks, and there's

no other information about the specific situation surrounding the breaking, then any

possible inductor is considered (the wind, an earthquake, a ball accidentally kicked by a

kid in the living room, the natural wearing of an object, etc.). This kind of interpretation

is a prime example of the necessity of an encyclopedic meaning as part of the linguistic

knowledge. However, this doesn't mean that it is not possible to have a somewhat more

restricted non-determination of the inductive force for the same verb. For instance, the

mention of a brindis ("toast") in (14) dramatically reduces the nature of the inductive

force to a human one. The necessity of a human agentive inductive force in a MTP

produces a se-impersonal construction (Maldonado 1999: 291-292).

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009The se-impersonal forms are a case of MTP constructions that seem to contradict

Shibatani's ideas about the middle voice, as presented earlier in this paper. In strictu

sensu, there's no way in which the event is restricted to the instigator's personal sphere in

an impersonal sentence like (14). The instigator is schematic, but it is there carrying out

the event in an active manner, in opposition to the periphrastic passive with ser ("to be"),

and a past participle form. Even in the case of (13) a typical MTP, it is possible to argue

that the event keeps restricted to the subject's internal sphere. Verbs like romper ("to

break"), as well as abrir ("to open"), hundir ("to sink"), etc. can be easily conceived as

intransitive-like situations (which is exactly the way in which these middles are expressed

in English). The energy that introduces the change of state is not clear as external force

acting over an object, what is clearer is the energy internal to the object going through

some very notorious change of state. This focus on the terminal point has as a

consequence the possibility of seen the event as self-inducted, which is again a way in

which an event doesn't go beyond the subject sphere.2

Nevertheless, it is problematic for Shibatani's definition that the impersonal meaning in

(14) actually combines the notion of an event that comes from an (undetermined)

inductor with an object whose change of state is prominently focused. This apparent

contradiction can be solved by assuming that the necessity for any human inductor, the

impersonal meaning, doesn't necessarily precludes an event from being focused in its

terminal state. In other words, se-impersonal sentences are a case of balance between

two competing conceptualizations. This idea was suggested by Maldonado (1999: 304-

305), but that I want to emphasize the notion of conceptual stability that is required in

order to achieve a felicitous conceptualization of an event. In sum, what a sentence like

(14) is showing, is a case in which both the patient-like subject that experiences the

change (a form of presenting an event compatible with Shibatani's broad definition of

middle voice), and an undetermined human inductive force coexist. In the next section, I

will provide an analysis of sentence (3) (A la policía se le respeta) that elaborates upon

these ideas.

2 It also contributes to the promotion of a patient to a subject position its high topicality, but it must be kept in mind that the energy inducing the change can be regarded as coming from the experiencer itself.

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2. Reconciling impersonality and the middle voice

According to Maldonado (1999: 293) there are three factors that determine se-impersonal

constructions: first, the human nature of the inductor, morphological and lexical aspect,

and, finally, the competition between subject and object to obtain the highest prominence.

I will illustrate and elaborate Maldonado's insights by applying them to the analysis of

(15), which repeats (3) here:

(15) A la policía se le respeta. (Police must be respected)

A first general problem is that the notion of impersonality3 provided by (15) seems too

detached from Shibatani's definition of the middle voice as a subject whose actions are

constrained by its own sphere. It is also a radical extension from the MTP construction an

impersonal basically is, since now the inductor has more prominence and is at least

identifiable as human, and understood as an active participant in the event: (15) clearly

suggests that someone is required to respect the police, and that the transfer of respect is

somehow deserved by the police. The meaning of (15) is not free from complex nuances

that require the notion of balance in the construction. Since speakers and hearers are

always trying to make sense out of the messages they produce or receive, any potential

contradiction in a message has to be justified by a special meaning that arises from the

balance of each and every grammatical element in the sentence. In order to balance out a

sentence that contains, as is the case of (15) a contradiction in terms (a clear, but not

specific, inductor, and a middle voice construction that it is not restricted to that non-

specific inductor), we need to consider the kind of speech act (15) is used as, and also

what we now about affectedness of participants as a results of the performance of events.

This is the main notions that I have kept in mind to provide an exhaustive description (i.e.

an explanation) of (15).

3 The notion of impersonal subject is a very complex one, since it involves from the subjects of "atmospheric" events, to indefinite pronouns (like "one"). I won't try to clarify this particular point and will defer to Maldonado's presentation of the notion of a "schematic subject".

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009Let us begin by examining what kind of inductor an impersonal-se sentence has. As it has

been said in section 1, those constructions are intrinsically special cases of MTPs. This

means that there's an inductive force, but one not clearly identifiable, since the event is

focused more on the theme that experiences a change of state. However, and very

importantly, it is not the same to have an unidentified inductor than to have a non-

particular human inductor. The latter is the case of se-impersonal constructions, hence

we are dealing with a situation in which the impersonal meaning is achieved in a

constructional way. It is clear that, by following Langacker's theory, Maldonado has

proposed an schematic definition of the clitic se based on what he considers the

prototypical usage (the MTP). The schema is elaborated (i.e. gains a particular profile) in

a construction. By understanding the construction we can determine the particular profile

of the se schema in a way that is balanced with the impersonal meaning.

Respetar is a verb that profiles the event in (15) as a stable predicate, one that involves an

inductor in a homogeneous and stable process. More specifically, respetar is, in Vendler's

classification, an activity (Maldonado 1999: 294). In this case, the verb is a psychological

one, which requires a volitional-sentient being as the inductor. In addition, it is crucial to

notice that the verb, besides being lexically stable, is marked in the present tense, which

provides a strong imperfective morphological aspect. This combination equals to an event

that extends homogeneously and effortlessly during and extended (and only externally

determined) period of time. As Maldonado (1999: 299) correctly observes, the

combination of a stable event and imperfective marking doesn't necessary creates a

generic or universal predicate. However, it is clear that the combination can be naturally

used to convey what the speaker considers to be current state of affairs. Events like (15)

don’t just overlap with the speech act; quite but the opposite, any time we speak the

condition described by (15) is already present, as an ongoing, permanent state that,

therefore, can be assumed as a characterization of the way reality needs to be. This notion

is what has been called a canonical predicate.

What is left to explain now is how the terminal prominence, according to Maldonado's

proposal the most important element of the schematic characterization of se is maintained

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009in a predicate whose reinforced stability makes hard to find a terminal point in which the

change of state can be prominently located. Maldonado (1999: 300) deals with the

problem by stating that the imperfectivity obscures the focal function of se over the

terminal portion of the event. Therefore, this unbalance creates more prominence for the

other function of se.4 However, this still doesn't addresses the problem of how the

terminal stage is preserved in an event that, as Maldonado (1999: 299-300) has pointed

out, has a conceptualization so homogeneous that determining a change of state period is

not inherently possible.

I want to propose that, in order to find a solution to this problem, we need to resort to the

notion of speech acts. A sentence like (15) is undoubtedly a form of order. It is an

expression that, in the same way as must, is establishing a deontic meaning. If this is true

(which I believe), then the whole predication creates a more abstract "change of state", in

which the event respetar is seen as something that must be kept or enforced. In sum, an

order rooted in the supposition of a canonical state of affairs, presupposes that the

situation has been contradicted or ignored by the (in)action of some inductors. Therefore,

that situation needs to change, and the change from non-respect to active respect is the

change of state that se is focusing. I think this little explanation is a more explicit

description of the interactions between meaningful elements in the sentence and,

crucially, the way they are put to use.

Up to this point we have focused only on one sentence, which provides a clear canonical

meaning. However, se-impersonal constructions are also present in sentences with

perfective aspect (as instantiated by the preterit in Spanish):

(16) Se respetó a los prisioneros de guerra. (War prisoners were respected, i.e. no harm was done to them)

4 This underlines the fact that both factors are not exactly simultaneous, since the one focusing on the change of state has conceptual preeminence over subject schematicity. This agrees with Shibatani's (2006) idea that the middle voice has to be related to some form of restriction of the action the immediate sphere of the inductor. Thus, subject schematicity is a product of the focus on the terminal stage of an event, the one that includes the change of state.

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009Maldonado (1999: 295-296) proposes that there's an inherent incompatibility between

stable predicates, like respetar, in the preterit marked with se.5 The problem with stable

predicates is that they inherently don't provide a terminal point that can easily be focused

by se. In addition, their homogeneous nature is, by definition, incompatible with the

perfective aspect of the preterit. However, this combinations can be "licensed" (to use a

term very common in formalist jargon) by a very powerful cognitive tool: construal

capabilities. Sentence (16) uses respetar with a different meaning, although related to the

one in (15). That meaning involves a way of actively doing something.6 In fact, what (16)

is expressing metonymically is something along the lines of "war prisoners' life has been

protected" or simply "the war prisoners were not hurt". This meaning is in agreement

with Maldonado's idea of a necessary change in the inherent aspect of the verb from a

stable predicate to a changing one (1999: 296). Respetar is in (16) an accomplishment: a

verb that involves some kind of temporal duration, which in this particular case is the

time that it takes to make the decision to spare those prisoners from any life threatening

harm. And as such, it entails a terminal portion that is focused by se, while giving

prominence to an undefined human inductor.

To wrap up, the impersonal reading in (16) is the sum of the following factors: the

complex psychological nature of the verb respetar, which demands a volitional inductor,

although schematically instantiated by the presence of se; and the changing predicate

sense achieved by the encyclopedic knowledge of the term "prisoner" (someone whose

fate depends very much upon someone else's active decision), which allows the situation

to hold focus on the change of state (from non-respected to respected). As it can be

5 The way in which this author presents the oddness of sentences using stable predicates, such as * Se fue suegra (Lit. "It was being a mother in law"), or ?? El libro se leyó ("The book was read") relays too much on the comparison between sentences like the previous ones and those with a changing predicate (achievements and accomplishments in Vendler's terminology) in context-free examples. For instance, the felicitous Se resolvió el problema ("The problem was solved" / "The problem solved itself"), a case in which a changing predicate in the preterit uses a clitic se, can only be understood if it is considered as an statement that implies certain change in a current state of affairs (which makes that sentence a perfect reply to the question "what happened?"). Hence, the oddity of sentences like Se fue suegra or El libro se leyó is that inherently they can't express a situation that qualifies as a relevant change in the current state of affairs. That impossibility is, as Maldonado rightfully puts it, due to the combination of an imperfective aspect, a lexically stable predicate, and, on top of that, a middle voice marker that focus on a non-clear terminal stage. 6 Let us not forget that meanings are organized in radial categories, as proposed by Lakoff (1987: 83), or categorizing relationships, as described by Langacker (2008: 37).

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009readily noticed, in this sentence, there's still a clear deontic sense implied by the whole

predication.

Consequently, in my perspective, a se-impersonal meaning obtains from the balance

between a non-specific inductor (presumably a human one), and a situation in which a

change of state is the (focalized) result of that induction, while keeping the whole use of

the situation as close as possible to a canonical (or deontic) meaning.7

3. On the alternation between IO and OD in a se-impersonal sentence

Perhaps the most interesting contribution ever made by a Peruvian institution to the

debate about the correction of an object form is sentence (4), repeated here as (17):8

7 As a marginal note, I would like to point out that (15) and (16), although very similar in that they are both deontic predicates, are still not necessarily identical in the scope to their potential inductors. If we assume that the following sentences:

(a) Uno respeta a la policía. (One respects the police)(b) Uno respetó a los prisioneros de guerra. (One respected war prisoners)

are forms that express an impersonal subject that parallels (15) and (16), respectively, by using the impersonal pronoun uno ("one"), then there's a clear difference between clauses in the present and those in the preterit. In (a) there's no possible referential reading allowed for uno; however, in (b), a perfective clause, uno is considered referential. It is as if the notion of identity of a noun were located in a continuum. If the event has a punctual reading (as b), then there must be an specific inductor, but it is unknown or irrelevant; while imperfective forms have a accentuated impersonality (there's no specific inductor at all, and as such, it is unidentifiable). This little digression only stresses the fact that the of impersonality is far from clear; but in general, I think this issue does not affect the core proposals in this paper.

8 Here I put an interesting comment left on the Spanish forum of the popular www.wordreference.com web page:

Bueno, en realidad sigo dudando, a mi me suena mejor usar "le", aunque no quiere decir que "la" sea del todo incorrecto (aunque a mi no me suena muy bien). La verdad es que no sabría explicar el porqué... si el Español fuera coherente, lo normal sería usar "la" (como tú dices). Pero el Español es tan raro que frases como "I didn't see anybody" se traducen por "No vi a nadie" (literalmente: 'I didn't see nobody') cuando parece que lo lógico sería "No vi a alguien".…Pero por ejemplo, si dices "A tu madre se la respeta" suena mal. Creo que en este tipo de frases lo correcto es "le", independientemente del género del sustantivo.(http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=36537)

[Well, actually I am still doubtful about this issue, the use of "le" sounds better to me, although it doesn't mean that "la" is entirely wrong (although it doesn't sound very good to me). The truth is that I can't tell why… If Spanish were coherent, it would be normal to use "la" (as you say). But Spanish is so weird that phrases like "I didn't see anybody" are translated into "No vi a nadie" (Lit. 'I didn't see nobody') when it seems that the logical thing would be "No vi a alguien" [the author of the comment, as it should be clear, thinks that a "double negative" is not logical, although it is what Spanish uses].

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http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=36537



(17) A la policía se la respeta. (Police must be respected)

This form, the Peruvian Secretary of Internal Affairs' slogan to fight the rampant bribing

culture present in that country, was created following a normativist rationale. (17) is

considered a form derived from (18), a sentence that, as clearly shown by (19) uses a DO

and not an IO.

(18) El pueblo respeta a la policía DO. (The people respect the police.)

(19) El pueblo la DO respeta. (The people respect them.)

This logic presupposes that (17) and (18) use the verb respetar in the same fixed way —

there's only one possible expression for the complement of that verb, and it is coded as a

DO—. As it is clear, in a functional-cognitive view, the coding of a grammatical relation

comes from the need to express subtle meaningful distinctions speakers are faced

continuously. Hence, there's always room for "exceptional" uses of grammatical

elements, as long as the intended meaning balances out the perceived "inconsistencies".

Moreover, as it was shown in section 2, the meaning of a sentence like (17) depends on

the kind of speech act it is intended to perform, as well as on its conception as a

homogeneous state to as an accomplishment. Then, an event like respetar, as any other

given verb, is never as simple as to be subject of such a simple and general explanation. I

will begin by presenting some cases that allow for DO / IO variation that are not

impersonal-se constructions. After pointing out the general conditions in which that

…For instance, if you say "A tu madre se la respeta" ["You mother must be respected"], it sounds wrong. I think that in this kind of phrases the correct form is "le", independently of the noun gender.]

What that opinion shows it that, effectively, some Spanish users are intrigued by the use of a direct DO instead of the "more natural" IO. It is also something worth mentioning that speakers from Argentina and Bolivia (as well as some areas in Spain) never use the IO, as observed by Taibo (no year: 114-119). This means that there's dialectal variation between the use of DO and OI in this impersonal-se constructions, but also, as I will show in this section, internal variation.

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009alternation is possible, then I will go back to (17) to motivate the preference for IO over

DO, although acknowledging the conditions for the use of DO.

3.1 Defining an Indirect Object (IO)

Langacker (2008: 103) has proposed that the basic organization of the elements

participating on a clause is motivated by some conceptual archetypes. The first one is the

billiard-ball model, by which the world is conceived as containing numerous discreet

objects moving and interacting with each other. This archetype produces the basic notion

of an action chain, in which an action consists in the transfer of energy from one

participant to the other. Different kinds of energy transfer involve different kinds of

participants. Here, I will concentrate just on three of them: first, the agent is the "energy

source"; second, the patient is the "energy sink" (the participant that undergoes a change

of state, typically affected by external forces); and finally the beneficiary. This final

element can be considered, in Langacker's terms an "additional schematic entity" that is

"sufficiently salient to function as elaboration site" (Langacker 2008: 360). In a canonical

model of an event, the agent is the trajector, and the patient is the landmark, both are

the focal participants in the event. Another participant is not focal, yet can be regarded as

central in the way the energy from the event is transferred. This situation is particularly

clear for ditransitive verbs as dar ("give"), etc.

(20) Juan le IO dio un libro a María IO. (Juan gave a book to María)

In this case, the IO is a participant coded by the means of a special clitic (le) and the

preposition a ("to"). In doing this, Spanish speakers present a participant —the

beneficiary or recipient, but I will stick with the first term— as a central participant that

is not focused in the clause (it is not the trajectory or the landmark). A remarkable feature

of this "third central argument" is its similarity to obliques (in that it uses a preposition),

while using a clitic (an strategy saved to stress the object nature of a participant in

Spanish). Although transfer verbs are very clear situation in which an IO is required, I

think it is particularly important to observe, following Langacker (2008: 392-393), that an

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Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009IO is not the to be characterized exclusively as the goal of a transfer event. The most

important basic semantic notion associated to indirect objects (or datives, if case marked)

is that that they are experiencers.

This notion is not a straightforward one, since a experiencer can be patient-like, as in I

am happy or He itches; but also can be agent-like, as in verbs of mental activity like those

of perception or cognition, as for instance I’m watching you; I remember your face, etc.

The first cases are passive experiencers, while the second ones are active experiencers

(Langacker 2008: 392, Maldonado 1999: 57). An IO differentiates from a DO in that it is

construed primarily an active participant. Therefore, it is possible to understand some

particular constructions as requiring an active experiencer participant. Sometimes, this

participant is not even a third participant, but the second one. In other words, it is not

written anywhere that the second participant must always be a DO. Sometimes, the

events require for its completion a participant that is conceived as an active one, but

instead of begin the inductor of the energy flow, is an interactive recipient of the energy

(an active experiencer). This fact can be seen in French:

(21) (a) Il voit sa mère. ‘He sees his mother.’ (b) Il la DO voit. ‘He sees her.’

(22) (a) Il obéit à sa mère. ‘He obeys his mother.’ (b) Il lui IO obéit. ‘He obeys her.’

Langacker (2008: 392) explains this contrast by stating that "a verb meaning ‘obey’

evokes a previous (unprofiled) event in which the landmark [sa mere] gives an order."

Consequently, the landmark has active properties and is the experiencer of someone else's

obedience. As it can be expected, verbs of communication, which presupposes an

interactive partner that pays attention to our words produces IO that are normally

presented as second participants.

(23) Juan le habló a su padre sobre sus problemas. (John talked to his father about his problems)

14



Let us present some other examples that should have made the normativist behind the

slogan A la policía se la respeta think a little harder before deciding to "abide the

grammatical rules."

3.2 Cases of IO instead of DO in Spanish

In this short section I want to examine if Langacker's observation about the schematic

meaning of an IO can be applied to some particularly notorious cases of use of IO in

Spanish over DO to mark the second participant in the energy transfer instantiated by a

clause. The most common case is the verb pegar (lit. "to stick" or "to glue"), which is

very commonly used as a synonym of golpear ("to hit").

(24) A los rateros IO los policías les IO pegaron muy duramente. (The policemen beat the thieves very hard)

(25) Los policías golpearon a los rateros DO muy duramente. (The policemen beat the thieves very hard)

In this case, pegar has incorporated as its common meaning the presupposed direct object

"un golpe" ("a blow", "a hit"), so what we originally had was a transfer construction

pegarle un golpe a alguien ("give someone a punch", but Lit. "to put a punch onto

someone"). However, some other verbs use an IO in a way that can't be clearly traced to a

presupposed DO, since they can also mark the second participant as a DO (although, to

my intuition, not as natural as the IO). Such is the case of psychological verbs that

express emotions.

(26) No sabes cuánto le apenó la noticia. (You don't know how much the news saddened her)

(27) No sabes cuánto la apenó la noticia. (You don't know how much the news saddened her)

(28) A él le alegran las visitas. (Visits make him happy)

15


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009(29) A él lo alegran las visitas. (Visits make him happy)

Sentences using an IO (26 and 28) pack a more active meaning, since the object of the

psychological verbs (verbs of emotion) are experiencers that actively react to the news

and the visits (the subjects of the previous sentences are the sources of the feelings, not

proper agents). The use of the DO (27 and 29) gives the situations a different flavor. In

29, it feels like there's a more objective description of the effect visits have in the subject,

almost as if describing the common behavior of the experiencer. This can be seen in the

following pair, which stresses the habitual reading using the auxiliary soler (equivalent to

"usually"):

(30) Las visitas suelen alegrarlo DO. (Visits usually make him happy)

(31) ?? Las visitas suelen alegrarle IO. (Visits usually make him happy)

This is evidence that the active nature of an IO is part of an event conceived in a time or

context restricted setting (one that allows to profile the active nature of the experiencer),

while a repetitive reaction to an stimulus ends up being perceived as a passive-like

reaction, which provides a motivation for the DO marking of the experiencer, and

produces a habitual reading for the clause.9

It should be clear, then, that there's not a completely fixed DO assignment to the second

participant in an action chain. In the case of psychological verbs, Spanish speakers codify

what kind of effect has the verb on the object: a DO points out a more passive

experiencer, while the IO expresses a more active experiencer. This doesn't mean,

however, that every emotion verb can express its second participant as a DO:

(32) A Christy le / * la gustan los gatos. (Christy likes cats)

9 In (27) I have the impression that the DO sounds more natural. This shouldn't be strange since the verb apenar ( "To sadden") involves a more passive-like experience (a form of suffering). In fact, the use of IO in (28) sounds almost as if the subject were deliberately feeling sad, which can reflect a situation in which we politely express our sorrow for something (which is a "fake" feeling we have to actively create).

16


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009Some verbs only express active experiencers, thus the use of DO is imposible.

Finally, let us examine a sentence like those in (33), which uses the verb temer, a verb of

emotional reaction:

(33) (a) Juan teme a los gatos. (Juan is afraid of cats)

(b) Juan les IO teme (Juan is afraid of them)

(c) ?? Juan los DO teme. (Juan is afraid of them)

In this case, the subject of temer is not the source of the emotion, but the experiencer, and

the source is placed as the object of the clause. I won't deal with the problem of having a

passive experiencer in the position of subject (which shouldn't be a problem, since

subject is not the same as agent). However, it is still interesting that los gatos ("the cats")

is marked as IO. The reason for this is that they are still experiencers, since they are the

target of an emotion. Moreover, they are active experiencers, since they are sentient

beings that produce fear in Juan. Maybe they don't do anything besides "being cats", but

that is not important, since we are considering them as an active source because of the

reaction they produce in Juan. Those two properties together are enough to motivate the

use of an IO over a DO. Interestingly enough, temer can only use the DO to mark its

object if this is a subordinate clause, something that is not animated, and, therefore, not

an active experiencer. This is shown on the subordinate clauses on (34) and (35), while

the last sentence on (35) refers to sus amigos, sentient beings.

(34) (a) Me temo que usted está desaprobado. (I'm afraid you didn't pass)

(b) ¡Me lo DO temía! (I was afraid of that!)

(35) A. No temes que él sea más fuerte que tú. (Aren't you afraid that he is stronger than you?)

B. ¡No lo DO temo! (I'm not afraid of that!)

A. ¿Pero a sus amigos? (And what about his friends?)

17



B. A ellos sí les IO temo… (Them I am afraid of…)

3.3 IO vs. DO in impersonal-se constructions

After having shown that there's nothing unusual about preferring IO over DO to mark the

second participant in some clauses, is time to go back to respetar and provide the

motivation for its rightful use with IO. This verb is interesting because it can be

considered a cognition verb with an experiencer subject that operates willingly upon an

object of attention that he/she respects. If this object is animated, then it can be aware of

the feelings he/she produces. For instance, Maldonado (1999: 77) observes that some

cognition verbs allows the agent a high level of control, which makes that agent an active

experiencer. He provides the following contrast:

(36) Él se respeta a sí mismo en todo momento. (He respects himself on every occasion)

(37) * Juan se entristeció a sí mismo con la noticia del homicidio. (Juan made himself sad with the news of the murder)

As it should be clear, (36) presents an event in which the agent has total control over the

transfer of (psychological) energy he puts in self-respecting. This is stressed by the use of

the adjunct en todo momento, which can only be felicitous if the agent is able to exert

continuous control over his action. On the other hand, (37) is impossible, since the

subject experiencer is a passive one, and, crucially, there's no clear distinction between

subject and object.10 Nevertheless, respetar can also be conceived as an emotion verb

that involves high level of volition from the agent (shown in 38), but not much control

(shown in 38):

10 A problem here is that (37) seems to contradict the explanations proposed for (26) and (27), which use a very similar verb, apenar ("to sadden"). The subject in (37) is a passive experiencer and can only be a passive experiencer, while in the other sentences, the object could be constructed as a passive or an active experiencer. What restricts the meaning in the subject of (37) is, of course, the middle use of se. By focusing on the change of state of a psychological verb (not an action one) what we have is an spontaneous situation, which precludes an interpretation of the subject as an active experiencer. Without the middle voice, that interpretation is open in (26)/(27).

18


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009(38) A la policía se le respeta inmensamente / con todo el corazón. (Police is

immensely / wholeheartedly respected)

(39) ?? A la policía se le respeta con todo detalle / minuciosamente. (Police is respected in full detail / elaborately)

(40) A la policía se le evalúa con todo detalle / minuciosamente. (Police is evaluated in full detail / elaborately)

It is clear that the impossibility for further elaboration of the event in (39) points to the

lack of control of the schematic subject over the event. Although, this is not a problem

produced by the impersonality, since (40), using the cognition verb evaluar ("to

evaluate") works perfectly well with the same adjuncts. The contrast between (38) and

(39) help elaborate over Naess' (2007) intuitions about extensions of the transitive

schema: in a non-prototypical transitive schema, such as the one in se le respeta, not only

the level of control found on a basic, non impersonal-se clause, needs adjustments to

convey the non-prototypical meaning, but also the object undergoes a different kind of

marking, which expresses its status as a non-passive (i.e. an active) experiencer.11

Respetar, thus, includes in its meaning a combination of cognition and emotion, and any

of those parts can be focused in language use, with the help of the kind of marking the

object has (as well as, of course, the aspectual properties of canonical predicates, as

explained in section 2). Respetar, understood as an emotion in (38), has an experiencer

11 I have mentioned to factors contributing to changes in the use of respetar: control and volition. The first one is related to the power of decision about the way of performing an action that an agent has. The second one is presupposed in the first, since there's no control without volition, but there can be volition without control. For instance, some feelings can be experienced with full consciousness, as in querer (to want), or desear (to wish), but they don't allow the subject (an experiencer) to exert much control. In some sense, there's not much to control, since those feelings are not associated to more elaborate psychological process (more like intellectual ones). Therefore, cognition verb typically involve control; emotion verbs don't. Is volition the condition sine qua non for all psychological verbs (a term that includes emotion, perception, and cognition? No, since there are verbs of emotional reaction, such as temer ("to be afraid of"). For a verb like temer the subject is a non-volitional experiencer, a situation that is very much like that of other spontaneous (middle) situations that involve emotion like enfurecerse ("become furious"), azorarse ("to become irritated"), asustarse ("to get frightened"), etc. So the situation of the subjects of psychological verbs depends on the level of volition and control over the event. As we will see in the rest of this work, the preeminence of volition over control on impersonal-se predicates contributes to the preference of the IO over the DO.

19


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009subject with low control, and high volition. This volition is expected from the kind of

speech act the basic sentence (15) (A la policía se le respeta) is intended to perform: an

exhortation, which in turn is deeply rooted in the speaker's belief about the way the world

should be. Whomever the inductor of that sentence could possibly be is expected to

actively engage in respecting behavior towards the police. Furthermore, we can't have a

complete understanding of respetar as an emotion if we don't consider that the object is

also an experiencer, albeit not a passive one, but, as it was the case of all of those IO

marked second participants, one that is seen as actively deserving the emotion from the

inductor. The combination of those factors —a canonical predication that is used as an

exhortation, and animate object, which is an active experiencer— produces the perfect

situation for the use of an IO.

However, the existence of (17) (A la policía se la respeta), which uses the DO clitic la to

mark the second participant in the clause is not a mistake. In fact, the use of a DO, as we

saw in 3.2, conveys a very specific meaning: the object is conceived as a passive

experiencer of the psychological verb, a situation that expresses, contrary to the

intentions of the Peruvian slogan, that the police is actually not doing anything to deserve

respect. That is the reason why it sounds "strange" to demote a human participant (the

institution is still considered metonymically as an individual, because it is composed of

persons) to a passive-like state in this particular clause, used prominently as an

exhortation.

Since meaning construction is a gradual matter, in which the whole conceptualization can

often surpass the sum of the parts, it is perfectly possible for impersonal-se constructions

that don't use a psychological verb to prefer an IO over a DO. It is possible to conclude,

then, that a canonical predication suggesting some level of engagement from their

animate objects motivates the use of an IO.

(41) A los ladrones se les / los castiga brutalmente en países fundamentalistas. (Thieves are brutally punished in fundamentalist countries)

20


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009After all, any human object can easily be conceived as an experiencer, and in canonical

situations that, like (41), it is implied that the experience suffered by someone depends on

their actions (as it was the case for obéit, "obey", in French). Hence, it is well justified to

mark the animate object as IO. The use of the DO marker, as it can be easily imagined,

although possible, can be perceived as a situation in which the thieves do not deserve the

punishing.

(42) A los ladrones se ? los / les castiga merecidamente en países fundamentalistas con la amputación de un miembro. (Thieves are deservedly punished in fundamentalist countries by amputating one of their limbs )

Going down through the continuum of conceptualization, the use of a DO is more likely

to occur with verbs that express a state of affairs that lacks the exhortative or deontic

meaning associated to verbs like respetar or castigar ("to punish"). In other words, the

balance of meaningful elements in the construction does not favor the active experiencer

reading of the object.

(43) A los niños se les / los pone en su corralito. (Kids are placed in their playpen)

(44) A los invitados se les / ? los sienta a la mesa. (Guests are sited at the table)

While (43) can use IO and DO, since kids can be passively objects of placing or active

experiencers of that event (sometimes, kids never want to collaborate with any action

they are supposed to be objects of); but on (44), guests are usually adults, which are

mostly in control of their acts, specially physical ones. This, in addition to the etiquette

norms associated to the act of having someone sitting at the table to eat, make strange the

use of DO, since the guests are not passively placed on their sits: they deserve to be sited,

and they sit by themselves (the host only points at their sits).

If we move more down the continuum we'll find that impersonal-se constructions are

very strange (or plainly impossible to make sense of) with entities at the very end of the

animacy scale. Amongst animals, insects are considered a border case between non-

21


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009animated and animated, while mammals are regarded, with good reason, as full sentient

beings:

(45) A las cucarachas se las / ?? les extermina con ácido bórico. (Roaches are exterminated with boric acid)

(46) A los leones se los / les extermina con trampas y rifles. (Lions are exterminated with traps and rifles)

Let us not forget that the conceptualization of experiencer comes from the speaker. It

doesn't matter, in objective terms, that the lions don't have any participation in their

extermination, they are just killed, and that is conveyed by the DO los. But if the speaker

is sympathetic to the situation of the lions, then the use of the IO object is acceptable, as

shown in (46). I seriously doubt that any speaker would be willing to conceive under a

sympathetic light the roaches struggle for survival (unless for comic effect), so the use of

the IO is particularly strange in (45).

One final question, a very basic one indeed, remains after having motivated the use of IO

in canonical impersonal-se constructions: why don’t the active counterparts of those

sentence that allow the alternation between IO and DO follow suit? In other words, why

don't we have a situation like the one presented in (47):

(47) (a) En el Perú la población respeta mucho a la policía DO. (In Peru, the population respects the police a lot)

(b) ?? En el Perú la población le IO respeta mucho. (In Peru, the population respects them (IO)a lot)

Since the situation in (47) is more of an statement, the level of engagement of the object

is not considered active (and if it is active, it is not regarded as relevant in the profiling of

the situation). In fact, this can be related to the terminal focus that se imposes on events.

The role of the police as "respect deserving entities" (active experiencers) is then more

natural if the event goes from active to middle (we are paying more attention to the final

part, and that crucially involves the respected object). Also, the prominence of an specific

22


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009subject, even if a very general one in this case, still guides the conceptualization towards

a description of a current state of affairs without implying that that is the way the

situation must be (deontic sense derived by both the speech act and the schematicity of

the inductor in the impersonal-se counterpart). Those reasons make the use of the IO not

possible on (47). Although, if push comes to shove, Spanish speakers can express their

particular conceptions about a highly individuated object in the active voice by using the

IO:

(48) (a) En el Perú la población respeta mucho a Juan Pérez. (In Peru, the population

respects Juan Pérez a lot)

(b) En el Perú la población lo / le respeta mucho. (In Peru, the population

respects Juan Pérez a lot)

A highly individuated object (not an institution, as la policía) as the target of the emotion

of a group of people can easily be considered as actively deserving that regard, therefore,

the IO can make an appearance (to the dismay of the normativist grammarian). High

individuation is another conceptual factor that can enter the balance of meanings present

in the impersonal construction covered in this paper, as the following dialogue illustrates:

(49) A. ¡Se necesita urgentemente a Juan Pérez! (Juan Pérez is urgently hended)

B. Y se le / ?? lo necesita ahora mismo… (And he is needed now…)

The high level of individuation creates a stronger view of the object as actively deserving

to be the person needed in (49). This situation breaks the alternation between IO and DO

making the IO strongly preferred. Once again, construction of a clause is achieved by

combining different lexical meanings at different levels (phrase, clause, and discursive

use) in order to reflect in the best possible way the intricacies of the speaker's construals.

3. Conclusions

Even if this paper has mostly dealt with one Spanish sentence, A la policía se le respeta,

my objective has been to explain, through a conceptual-functional motivation two

23


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009different phenomena: first, the contribution of a middle marker (the clitic se) to an

impersonal meaning in a canonical predicate, and, second, the validity (and naturalness)

of the use of the IO instead of the DO in these impersonal sentences.

In doing so, I have followed Maldonado's (1999) insights about the role of the Spanish

middle marker. As an element that focuses on the change of state located in the terminal

portion of an event, it produces the defocusing of the inductor of the event. My

contribution has been to emphasize the necessity of balancing different meanings present

in an impersonal clause (as the morphological and lexical aspect observed by Maldonado)

with the discursive use of the clause. I think that the deontic/exhortative use of

impersonal sentences contributes strongly to the impersonal meaning (although I prefer to

see the whole production of meaning in A la policía se le respeta as a gestalt, not as the

"adding up" of individual factors).

Finally, I continued the analysis by offering an explanation of the preference of IO over

DO in impersonal-se constructions by following Langacker's definition of an indirect

object as central participant, which is an active experiencer in the event chain. That

definition, embedded in the intended meaning for the whole sentence (again a discourse

factor) has allowed me to present the naturalness of the use of IO to mark several cases of

second participants in active clauses (a role typically reserved to DO). Based on those

observations, I have motivated the use of IO in impersonal-se constructions as the results

of the particular conceptualization of the animate (normally human) object of a canonical

situation as actively deserving to be the target of the inductor's emotion (or any other

event that can be conceived as a necessary behavior in a canonical predicate frame).

This study is, due to obvious time limitations, only based on my intuition as a native

speaker of Limenian Spanish (a variety that still prefers to use the IO to mark human

participants on impersonal-se constructions). To confirm, or deny, my observations, a

corpus study of Peruvian Spanish and Peninsular Spanish (specially the one spoken in

Madrid) —two areas that regularly use the IO in those impersonal clauses, according to

Taibo (no year)— is necessary. One important element to be kept in mind for future

24


Student: Carlos Molina-Vital December 9th, 2009studies on this topic is that the use of se in impersonal sentences is considered a mark of

extreme objectivity, a feature of very formal written texts or speeches, and not of natural

conversation. The strategy of using the IO to mark an active experiencer could be being

left behind because of the goal of objectivity in formal texts. In other words, it is not the

awareness of a normative rule what could be turning the tide in favor of the use of a DO

on impersonal clauses, but the speaker's necessity to portray a more "objective self" while

producing formal texts. This observation could very well be the object of a study about

grammar, conceptualization and text strategies.

REFERENCES

Kemmer, Suzanne. 1993. The Middle Voice. Typological Studies in Language 23. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, Fire, And Dangerous Things. Chicago. UCP.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2008. Cognitive Grammar. A Basic Introduction. Oxford.

Langacker, Ronald W. 2006. “Dimensions of defocusing”. In Voice and Grammatical Relations, Tsunoda, Tasaku and Taro Kageyama (eds.), 115–137.

Maldonado, Ricardo. 1999. A media voz. Problemas conceptuales del clítico se. Mexico: UNAM.

Naess, Áshild. 2007. Prototypical Transitivity. Typological Studies in Language 72. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Shibatani, Masayoshi. 2006. "On the conceptual framework for voice phenomena". Linguistics 44-2. 217-269.

Taibo, Marcelo. No year. Las construcciones con se en una muestra del Corpus de referencia del español actual (CREA). Available in http://www.liccom.edu.uy/bedelia/cursos/lenguaescrita/archivos/Tesis.pdf

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http://www.liccom.edu.uy/bedelia/cursos/lenguaescrita/archivos/Tesis.pdf

http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=TSL%2065

http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_bookview.cgi?bookid=TSL%2065

Documents

Direct and Indirect Objects in Spanish Se-impersonal Clauses