acceptable ungrammatical sentences in spanish

Acceptable Ungrammatical Sentences in SpanishAuthor(s): Carlos OteroSource: Linguistic Inquiry, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Spring, 1972), pp. 233-242Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177708 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 19:14

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Linguistic Inquiry.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 91.229.229.111 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 19:14:05 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mitpress

http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177708?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

References

Emonds, J. (1970) Root and Structure Preserving Transforma- tions, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT (reproduced by the Linguistics Club, Indiana University).

Langacker, R. W. (I969) "On Pronominalization and the Chain of Command," in D. A. Reibel and S. A. Schane, eds., Modern Studies in English: Readings in Transformational Grammar, Prentice-Hall, New York.

Ross, J. R. (I968) Constraints on Variables in Syntax, unpublished Doctoral dissertation (reproduced by the Linguistics Club, Indiana University).

ACCEPTABLE UNGRAMMATICAL

SENTENCES IN SPANISH

Carlos Otero, UCLA

There are a number of Spanish constructions involving the surface particle se which have been the object of much con- troversy (Bolinger I969, 488; Otero I965). The so-called "spurious se" (Perlmutter 1970, I89), which stands for le(s), is no problem (I will write "'se" for ease of distinction):

(i) a. Pepe le(s) dio todo ello a Memo (y a Luis). 'Joe gave it all to Bill (and to Louis).'

b. Pepe "se" lo dio todo (a Memo (y a Luis)).

Unlike "se", ordinary se is part of a pronominal paradigm (me, te, se, nos, os, se). Usually it is a necessary part of the construction (but cf. (2C)). As such, it can be either reflexive (properly speaking) as in (2A)

rNosotros nos dimos (a (2A) a. nosotros mismos) Ja alguien.

Pepe se dio (a si J mismo)

(We (ourselves to someone.' lJoeJ gave himself

rNosotros nos ~ [(a nosotros]

[Nosoros ns] . mismos) | b. dimos las gracias nio si ~Pepe se dio J({msmo

fWe] fourselves) 'Wee gave thanks to himselfvs 41oef hmef

or just "pronominal" (Otero I967) as in (2B)

rlNosotros nos atrevimos *(a nosotros) (2B) c. Nosotros nos atrevimos mismos) .

1Pepe se atrevio * (a si J mismo)



234 SQUIBS AND DISCUSSION

fWe~ dared.' {PepeJ

(cf. *Pepe atrevio)

FNosotros nos fuimos (a nsos) d. mismos) L

LPepe se fue *(a si mismo)

c, We left.' tJoeJ

(cf. Pepe fue 'Joe went')

But sometimes its presence adds a subtle difference to the sentence:

(2C) e. Pepe (se) cayo. 'Joe fell (?down).'

f. Pepe (se) callo. 'Joe stopped talking.'

g. Pepe (se) murio. 'Joe died.'

h. Pepe (se) comio la manzana. 'Joe ate the apple (?up).'

Besides "se" (as in (i)) and se (as in (2)), there is in Spanish another SE (I will write it in capitals for ease of distinction) which appears to be quite different. Following Perlmutter, I will gloss it PRO:

(3) (*Pepe) SE dio la orden de exterminar a los vietnamitas. 'PRO gave the order to exterminate the Vietna- mese.'

Perhaps the most recent attempt to identify this SE with ordinary se is to be found in Langacker (1970).' A single sentence, however, is enough to open such an analysis to doubt:

(4) a. Hoy en dia (*Pepe) SE es perseguido sin piedad por los esbirros y (SE es) asesinado vilmente por los sicarios de la autoridad y la sinrazon.

1 This identification has a long story. Its most influential advocate was no doubt Andres Bello (I 78 I-I 865), whose tremendous prestige, in great part due to his frequently reprinted grammar (Bello 1847), has to be counted as a factor in subsequent developments. Pedro Martinez Lopez, also a follower of Bello's " philosophical" tradition (Otero I968, 67), gives an analysis more in line with that given below.




'Nowadays PRO is mercilessly persecuted by the myrmidons and (PRO is) vilely murdered by the hired assassins of authority and un- reason.'

which presumably is the passive of (4b) where, as usual, the PRO which develops into SE reduces basically to [+ human] .2

(4) b. Hoy en dia los esbirros persiguen sin piedad a PRO y los sicarios de la autoridad y la sinrazon asesinan vilmente a PRO

Thus, SE Formation must be after passive (cf. (4a)), while, if se Formation were part of the same rule, one would obtain passives like (4c) with ordinary se, as in (2).

(4) c. *se son matados por los sicarios 'themselves were killed by the hired assassins'

This seems enough to establish that SE =# se. We note, in addition, that structures such as (4b) do not have a corresponding surface structure if Passivization does not apply (i.e. it is not possible to impose the meaning of (4b) on either (5a) or (5b)):

(5) a. *los esbirros Spersiguen (a) SE

(cf. los esbirros se persiguen 'the myrmidons persecute each other')

b. *SE persigue(n) (a) los esbirros (cf. se persiguen los esbirros 'the myrmidons persecute each other')

On the other hand, the structure (6a), when passivized (as in (6b)), cannot have a by-phrase. Therefore, after Agent Deletion applies, its passive transform is indistin- guishable in surface structure from a passive transform with a specified agent source (e.g. (7)).

(6) a. (*El gobierno) SE persigue a los que disienten. 'PRO persecutes those who dissent.'

b. Los que disienten son perseguidos (*por SE).

2 Consider

(i) *SE cuesta dos dMlares. 'PRO costs two dollars.'

(ii) *SE rebuzna mas de la cuenta. 'PRO brays too much.'

and the like, although this last example could be used metaphorically to mean 'PRO talks nonsense too often' (the same is true of similar sentences).




(7) a. El gobierno persigue a los que disienten. b. Los que disienten son perseguidos (por el

gobierno).

As pointed out by Perlmutter (1970, 203), SE is not compatible with se (or with "se") in the same sentence:3

(8) a. With olvidar-se de: *SE se olvid6 de algo. 'PRO forgot something.'

b. With olvidar: Ni SE olvida lo que SE quiere olvidar ni SE recuerda lo que SE quiere recordar. 'Neither does PRO forget what PRO wants to forget nor does PRO remember what PRO wants to remember.'

Nor is it compatible with plural verb forms followed by que S 'that S'

(g) a. SE {*dicen} que el dolar esta en peligro.

'PRO says that the dollar is in danger.'

or followed by the direct object marker a4

(g) b. SE {*felicitan} a los amigos.

'PRO congratulates PRO's friends.'

or by a preposition required by the verb

(g) c. SE { penso en (explotar (a)) los paises *pensaronJ subdesarrollados.

'PRO thought of (exploiting) the under- developed countries.'

3 Italian gets around this: *SI si umilia * CI si umila

'PRO humiliates PRO'

Compare French on s'humilie; German man erniedrigt sich; Spanish *SE se humilla.

4 Sometimes the a of the indirect object is enough to "mislead" the writer (who is fully aware of the restriction typical of sentences like (9b)) into using a nonplural verb form with a plural object; for example,

El I7 de julio [de 1940] SE impuso [nonplural] a Franco las insignias [plural] de la Gran Cruz Laureada de San Fernando. 'On July I7, 1940, PRO invested on Franco the insignias of the Great Laureate Cross of Saint Ferdinand.'

(R. Garriga, Las relaciones secretas entre Francoy Hitler, Buenos Aires, I965, ii6; cf. 36.)




SE is also incompatible with a plural verb form if the verb is intransitive, as in (9d)

(g) d. Bajo el yugo de la autoridad no SE {*vivenj bien.

'Under the yoke of authority PRO doesn't live well.'

or if SE is followed by the copula, as in g(e)

(9) e. SE feson} humano {* ( ono SE lo {eso 1*SonJ (s)) ~ *SO

'PRO is human or PRO is not it [= human].'

From examples (4)-(9) we can safely conclude that.

(io) a. SE : se (cf. (4)-(.5)); b. SE can appear only in "subject position"

(cf. (4), (6)), and excludes any type of overt subject, while se does not (cf. (2));

c. SE cooccurs freely with intransitive verbs (provided they take human subjects) and with the copula (cf. (9d, e));

d. SE is in no way dependent on the passive (cf. b and c above, and footnote 8).

It should be noted that in examples (4b), (6a), (7a), (9b), and (9c), and in several others to be given below, the (auxiliary) verb consistently shows third person nonplural agreement before a plural object noun phrase. It couldn't be otherwise. Only with transitive verbs with prepositionless direct objects do (usually different) speakers use pairs of sentences such as (i i) with either a nonplural or a plural verb form before a plural object noun phrase:

(I I) a. SE {alquila } (los) apartamentos. b. alquilan

'PRO rents (the) apartments.'

Observe, however, that in either case the pronominal sentence corresponding to (I i) is (I 2):

(12) SE los alquila. (cf. ( I Ia)) 'PRO rents them.'

There is no sentence (I3) identical in surface form to the ambiguous (I 4),

(I3) *SE los alquilan. (cf. (IIb)) (I4) SE los alquilan.

'They rent themk {to themselves } ~to each other




nor are there simple sentences with common nouns without determiners as subjects (cf. (19) ):5

(I 5) a. * apartamentos se fpor si mismos}

los alquilan solos

'(The) apartments rent themselves.'

b. f* } vietnamitas se fpor si mismos los defienden tsin ayuda de nadief

'The Vietnamese defend themselves without help.'

where por si mismos (obviously not a passive by-phrase) is in contrast with the true reflexive (cf. (2a)):

(I6) Los vietnamitas se defienden (a si mismos). 'The Vietnamese defend themselves.'

Also significant is the fact that utterances such as (i ib) are heard almost exclusively among "educated" speakers, while those like (i I a) are common "on the other side of the tracks", notably in the rudimentary advertisements and notices posted by often unschooled speakers (e.g. SE vende maderos 'PRO sells logs', SE vende materiales de derribo 'PRO sells rubble', SE coge puntos a las medias 'PRO fixes runs in stockings'). On the other hand, among the speakers I have observed closely I have not found any who use the (i ib) type exclusively, even among those who passionately extol its virtues (there is usually more consistency in writing, as would be expected), while it is not difficult to find journalists and other professional writers who frequently use the (i ia)

5 This has been questioned by Bolinger (I969, 484-485), but his counterexamples seem to me only apparent:

i. Prop6sito de este libro, es, pues, 'llenar el vacio...' 2. El oficio del artista no es otro que tomar un breve trozo de la

realidad ... y hacer que nos sirva para expresar el resto del mundo ... Arte es simbolizacion.

I would consider them similar to (i) or (ii) or something of the sort:

(i) (un) prop6sito . de este libro es, pues . . . uno de los prop6sitos'

'one (of the) goal(s) of this book is, then, . . (ii) (todo) (lo que es) arte es simbolizaci6n

'(everything) (that is) art is symbolization'

As for (iii):

(iii) Hombres no se portan asi. 'Men do not behave that way.'

I take it to be irremissibly ungrammatical, with all due respect to its highly qualified sponsors.




type "by mistake". 6 No speaker, however, has the slightest difficulty of interpretation with pairs such as (I 7a, b) or with contrasts such as in (I8):

(I 7) a. Los miembros de la junta se reunieron. Se reunieron los miembros de la junta. 'The members of the junta got together.'

b. SE reunio (a) los miembros de la junta. 'PRO brought together the members of the junta.'

(I8) Las cosas no se arreglan por si mismas; SE las arregla. 'Things don't fix themselves; PRO fixes them.'

Since the marker a doesn't have to be present in (I 7b), the only surface structure cue to the sharp difference in meaning between it and one of the forms of (I 7a) -cf. (i8) -is the verb form: nonplural with SE in (I 7b); plural, as the subject requires, with se in (I 7a). Similarly, only the plural morpheme -n distinguishes (I4) from (I2), the verb form of the latter being unmarked for plurality. In the face of (12)-(14), (iia)-(I5a), and (I7), it can hardly be claimed that plurality of the verb form, which is crucial in these and many other cases, is irrelevant in (i ib). Such a claim would be quite irreconcilable with the facts. Not only is there no pronominal sentence corresponding to (i i b) as (I2) corresponds to (i ia), but also there is no topicalized version of (i I b):

(i9) a. Los apartamentos SE los alquila. (ioa) b. *Los apartamentos SE los alquilan. (cf. (iob)) c. Los apartamentos se alquilan solos. (Isa)

(This paradigm is further evidence (cf. I5) that the noun phrase los apartamentos is a direct object, not a subject: the clitic los which precedes alquila shows that a direct object has been topicalized.) Moreover, to directly generate (Chomsky I967, 193) the structure (i ib), the only type of simple sentence with SE that is accepted with a plural verb form, would require a Verb Agreement rule which attaches

6 Once I asked Manuel SacristAn, former professor of the Univer- sity of Barcelona, why utterances like (x i a), so common in his speech (even when lecturing) were hard to find in his copious writings. His un- hesitant reply was that he consciously purges them out because he takes them to be a "madrileniismo" due to his having grown up in Madrid. More recently, the self-exiled novelist Juan Goytisolo (a native of Barcelona now living in Paris) was happy to discover that his view on the matter (at odds with Bello's) might not be wrong after all.




the plural morpheme to a verb with an unspecified human subject (manifested as SE) just in case

(20) a. the direct object is not que S (cf. (9a)); b. the verb is not intransitive (cf. (9d) ); c. the verb is not the copula (cf. (9e)); d. the oblique noun phrase is not preceded by a

preposition (cf. (9b, c)); e. the direct object is not a clitic (cf. (I2))

or the direct object has not been topicalized (cf. (I ga) ) or the sentence cannot be construed in more than one way (cf. (I 7) ) .

A set of conditions such as (20) is rather strange for a "rule of grammar", even if we substitute (b, c) for "the verb is transitive ". Alternatively, one might propose a second Verb Agreement rule (in addition to the regular one, needed anyway), which would copy the specification for [plurality] from the object noun phrase (nonhuman, as it happens) just in case conditions (d, e) of (20) are fulfilled. But such an ad hoc proposal does not seem to have more merit than the previous one.

No more seems to be needed to conclude that, although acceptable for many speakers, (i ib) is in fact ungrammatical and cannot be directly generated by the grammar of Spanish.7 A paradigm such as (2IA)-(2iB) is hard to reconcile with (I 7) if we do not assume that only se (not SE) is possible in (2 I B): 8

7 It is not, then, "a problem of dialectal variation" (Bolinger I969, 484, 486) if the notion "dialect" is defined in generative terms (something not always taken into consideration among generative grammarians).

8 Trying to explain (2 I B) and (i i b) as passives or " midpassives" (Bolinger I969, 486, 488; Langacker I966, 250, goes as far as to give a precyclic Mid-Passive transformation which supposedly applies before Reflexivization) seems to me hopeless. In addition to the examples given in the main text, consider the following paradigms:

(i) a. SE cumplio la(s) promesa(s). 'PRO fulfilled PRO's promises.'

b. Las promesas fueron cumplidas. 'The promises were fulfilled.'

c. *Las promesas se cumplieron. (ii) a. *SE cumplio la(s) profecia(s).

(cf. *SE llovi6 'PRO rained') b. *Las profecias fueron cumplidas. c. Las profecias se cumplieron.

'The prophecies were fulfilled.' It should be clear that sentences like (c) are in no way equivalent or quasi-equivalent substitutes for passives like (b), nor are they "midway" between (b) and (a) in any definable sense. It is also far from true, con- trary to what is generally assumed, that SE sentences usually correspond




(2 iA) a. SE reunio (a) los miembros de la junta. (i6b)

b. *SE reunieron a los miembros de la junta.

(2 IB) a. *SE reunieron los miembros de la junta.

b. Los miembros de lajunta {*SEreunieron. ~se)

(cf. (i6a))

To conclude: wide acceptability is no guarantee for grammaticality.9 In this connection it is to be remembered that the Port-Royal grammar already required "un usage general et non conteste" (II, ix). As we have seen, the usage with respect to (ii b) is far from general and undisputed. This is also the case in several other Romance languages (Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, Rumanian. . .) with counter- parts to (i i).10 It seems clear, however, that the speaker who has internalized the grammar generating the sentences in (9), (12), (I7), (i9), and (2I) must do violence to his grammar if he is to produce (i i b). In other words, per- formance is here at odds with knowledge of the language.11 Some of the psycholinguistic factors involved might not be too remote. Even after studying these constructions for a number of years, it is not always instantly obvious to the speaker whether it is a matter of se or SE. As for the hearer, ambiguity will haunt him more often than not (cf. Lang- acker I966, 249):

(22) a. SE aplica la regla => (a) la regla SE 'PRO applies the rule' la aplica

to passives (or vice versa). Even when the verb is transitive this is not the case; for example,

(iii) a. SE prohibe fumar. 'no smoking' [lit. 'PRO forbids to smoke']

b. *Es prohibido fumar.

It goes without saying that there is no passive to correspond to intran- sitives such as (9d) or copulatives like (ge).

9 If, as in Burt (I97I, 245), the star is to be equated with "un- acceptable sentence", another sign is necessary for marking "ungrammatical sentences" such as (I i b), which is widely accepted.

10 Naro (1 968) argues in favor of the legitimacy of the Portuguese counterpart of (i i a), but he takes the counterpart of (ii b) to be grammatical also (although, except for the lack of a counterpart to (I2), everything said here seems to apply equally well to Portuguese).

11 After reading the first draft of this squib,Joe Emonds has pointed out to me that there are several English examples, among them those he gives in his dissertation (I970, 1.3), that he takes to be also cases of acceptable but not fully grammatical constructions, as those given earlier by Chomsky (I967, 193-I95) seem to be. I am also indebted to Emonds for several improvements incorporated into this revised version.




b. se aplica la regla -= la regla se aplica 'The rule applies.'

(23) a. SE cerro la puerta => la puerta SE la 'PRO closed the door' cerro

(cf. Fr. on ferma la porte)

b. se cerro la puerta = la puerta se cerro (cf. Fr. la porte se 'The door closed.' ferma)

References Bello, A. (1847) Gramatica de la lengua castellana destinada al

uso de los americanos, 20. ed., Roger & Chernoviz, Paris, I921.

Bolinger, D. (I969) "Of Undetermined Nouns and Inde- terminate Reflexives," Romance Philology 22, 484-489.

Burt, M. K. (I97i) From Deep to Surface Structure: An Introduction to Transformational Syntax, Harper & Row, New York.

Chomsky, N. (I967) "Remarks on Nominalization," in Jacobs and Rosenbaum, eds., I 84-221.

Emonds, J. E. (1 970) Root and Structure-Preserving Transfor- mations, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT (reproduced by the Linguistics Club, Indiana University).

Goldin, M. G. (I968) Spanish Case and Function, Georgetown University Press.

Jacobs, R. A. and P. S. Rosenbaum, eds. (1970) Readings in English Transformational Grammar, Ginn and Co., Waltham, Mass.

Langacker, R. W. (i 966) A Transformational Syntax of French, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois.

Langacker, R. W. (I970) Review of Goldin (I968), Language 46, I67-I85.

Martinez Lopez, P. (I838) Principios de la lengua castellana, 2. ed., Calleja, Madrid, I841.

Naro, A. J. ( I 968) History of Portuguese Passives and Impersonals, unpublished Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Otero, C. P. (I965) "El otro se," reprinted in C. P. Otero, Letras, I, Tamesis, London, I966.

Otero, C. P. (I967) "The Syntax of mismo," Actes du Xe Congres International des Linguistes, Bucharest, 1970.

Otero, C. P. (I968) Introduccion a la linguiistica transformacional, Siglo XXI, Mexico.

Perlmutter, D. M. (1970) "Surface Structure Constraints in Syntax," Linguistic Inquiry i, I85-255.



acceptable ungrammatical sentences in spanish

Documents