Personal Pronouns / Ergativity

[Rick Mc Callister]

[snip]

>1. the expression 'estáte quieto' (keep, stay, remain...quiet), remarkable
>because 'estar' is already stative and clearly intransitive and not
>susceptible to becoming reflexive; so I presume it is to be interpreted as
>medio-passive.  But what mental process and/or grammatical 'reasoning' is
>behind it?

	Reflexive pronouns are used for inchoate, intensive & emphatic
actions as well as for reflexive, reciprocal and mediopassive.
	Mediopassive constructions [strictly speaking] only occur in 3rd
person:
	Se vende pizza. Se venden pizzas.
	[literally: "Pizza sells itself." "Pizzas sell themselves."
	Se me perdieron las llaves.
	[literally: "My keys lost themselves on me."
	Mue/rate "drop dead"
	Due/rmete "go to sleep"
	Te comiste el sandwich "you scarfed down the sandwich"
	[comer = German essen, comerse = German fressen]
	Te bebiste toda la botella "you chugged the whole bottle"

>2. the formally reflexive use of transitive verbs in Castilian that has exact
>parallels in (modern) Greek medio-passive: 'se prohibe (in older Spanish:
>prohibese) la entrada' (Greek: apagoréyetai he: éisodos (pron.
>/apagorévete i ísodhos/) or

>'vendese [sic] esta casa' or 'enjuáguese el envase'.

	This is non-standard usage [but it's also found in older Spanish
texts up to the XX century]
	Standard Spanish uses the subjunctive for these, e.g.
	Que se venda la casa, que se enjuague el envase
	You can say <enjua/guese la boca> "rinse out your mouth, gargle" in
standard Spanish but you normally say enjuague el vaso "rinse the glass"