what to make of the Spanish IRSE?

[ENRIQUE BERNARDEZ SANCHIS]

Hi. I disagree, there is no sense of willfulnes or deliberateness, just the
opposite. It is in fact middle voice. And it is not exactly colloquial,
altyhough there is a lot of variation among the 400 million speakers, of
course! But I do not see it as "stronger" than ir. Neither do the many
grammars, papers etc devoted to the analysis of this form.
Seeing a form in a language as "kinda like English" is very inadequate, I
think. Just try to say "up and die" or the like. There is just no
grammaticalised equivalence in English. There are many similarities with
the Nordic languages, but not with English.
Enrique

2014-09-15 23:34 GMT+02:00 Haag, Marcia L. <haag at ou.edu>:

>  For me, it's kinda like English 'up and leave', which has a more
> colloquial and stronger sense than 'go' or 'leave.'
>
>  'He left' vs 'He up and left.'
>
>  The Spanish reflexive gives the sense of willfulness or deliberateness,
> and counts among the uses of middle voice rather than pure reflexive.
>
> Marcia Haag
> Associate Professor of Linguistics
> President's Associates Presidential Professor
>
>  On Sep 15, 2014, at 1:39 PM, Donald Stilo wrote:
>
>  Dear Enrique,
>
>  Regarding *Juan se murió *de un disparo*:  But m*e muero de hambre* is
> OK, isn't it? Why? Is it because it is not external?
>
>  And to Sergey: in addition to Spanish *irse*, note French: *je m'en
> vais,* Italian *me ne vado* "I'm leaving, going away".
>
>  Thanks, Don
>
>
>  On Sep 15, 2014, at 5:21 PM, ENRIQUE BERNARDEZ SANCHIS wrote:
>
>  Dear Sergey. No mystery here. The reflexive marker came to be used with
> a variety of senses, all of them impliying the action is seen as restricted
> to the participant; it may be reflexive (afeitarse: to shave (oneself)) to
> pure middle voice: "caerse" "to fall down" implies that no external entity
> or agent is responsible for the fall; to inceptive "irse" which usually
> marks the beginning of the process of going. Another use of the -se form (a
> pronoun in fact) is a kind of emphasis on the absolute limitation of the
> action/process to the participant: rather like "caerse" but I would see in
> a more radical way: morirse "to die" is different from simple morir (also
> to die). The first (-se form) just tells us that the person died, with the
> specific exclusion of any external participant, whereas in morir (or in
> caer) the external participant, more or less agentive, is not excluded. You
> cannot say "Juan se murió de un disparo" (Juan died from a shot / because
> of a shot...), whereas Juan murió de un disparo is perfectly common.
> Any history of the Spanish Language (there are many, in Spanish, German,
> French, also in Russian, English...) you will find the historical process
> leading from the reflexive to this array of "intransitivised" constructions.
> Enrique
>
> 2014-09-15 15:39 GMT+02:00 Sergey Lyosov <sergelyosov at inbox.ru>:
>
>>  Dear typologists,
>>
>> what do you think –se is doing on the Spanish irse  ‘to go away, to
>> leave’? How come a reflexive marker on a detransitive verb of motion?
>>
>>   Sergey
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>  --
> Enrique Bernárdez
> Catedrático de Lingüística General
> Departamento de Filología Románica, Filología Eslava y Lingüística General
> Facultad de Filología
> Universidad Complutense de Madrid
>
>
>
>


-- 
Enrique Bernárdez
Catedrático de Lingüística General
Departamento de Filología Románica, Filología Eslava y Lingüística General
Facultad de Filología
Universidad Complutense de Madrid
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