Spanish Anticausative Inherent Reciprocals and Syntactic Reciproclas with Se

Abstract

Within the debate about the heterogeneity of unaccusative structures, the aim of this paper is to distinguish two types of Spanish marked anticausative inherent reciprocals (AIRs) from other syntactic reciprocals (SRs) with se. Several diagnostics show that AIRs such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’ are symmetric, unaccusative, telic, and show causative alternations, while SRs are transitive and vary in their aspectual properties and do not show causative alternations. The en/durante ‘in/for’ adverbials test reveals that there are two types of AIRs: achievements such as casarse ‘get married’, and degree achievements such as mezclarse ‘get mixed’. Although the clitic is an agreement marker in these reciprocal constructions, it is an expletive voice head with casarse, a causative head with mezclarse, and an anaphor merged in the internal argument position in SRs. Differences between AIRs and SRs depend on semantic properties associated to their respective event structures.