|
This paper is a product of the first comprehensive corpus-based
investigation of register differences in Spanish syntax. This ongoing
investigation has been funded by the US National Science Foundation, and
will be completed in late 2004. It is based on many different registers
in a 20 million word corpus of Spanish, which is a subset of the 1900s
portion of the Corpus del Español (www.corpusdelespanol.org).
The study is based on the same basic methodology as
the investigations of register variation that have been carried out by
Biber for other languages (cf. Biber 1993, 1996, 1999). We select more
than sixty syntactic features, and examine how their frequency and
distribution vary across register, and which features most tightly
cluster together.
One of the most interesting syntactic features is the
range and use of the “reflexive” marker [se] in Spanish. This morpheme
can have an extremely wide range of uses, including the following:
|
1 |
true
reflexive |
María se vio en el espejo |
Mary
saw herself in the mirror |
|
2 |
Reciprocal |
María y Juan se besaron |
Mary
and John kissed each other |
|
3 |
intransitive (middle) |
María se baño / se sentó |
Mary
took a bath / sat down |
|
4 |
emotional reaction |
María se sorprendió / se enojó |
Mary
was surprised / got mad |
|
5 |
body
movement |
María se fue/ ha vuelto a México |
Mary
left for / has returned to Mexico |
|
6 |
change / inchoative |
María se durmió |
Mary
went to sleep |
|
7 |
“energetic” |
María se cayó en la nieve
María se tomó la cerveza |
Mary
fell in the show
Mary gulped down the beer |
|
8 |
inherent/lexical |
María se queja / se arrepiente |
Mary
complains / feels bad |
|
9 |
decausative |
se
hundió el barco
se
derritió el hielo |
The
boat Sank
The ice melted |
|
10 |
passive |
se
vendieron los libros |
The
books were sold |
|
11 |
impersonal |
se
vive bien en España |
One
lives well in Spain |
|
12 |
causative |
María se operó |
Mary
had an operation |
In spite of its frequency and range of uses in Spanish, [se] is
typically treated only in a very cursory and fragmentary manner in many
textbooks for English learners of Spanish. Often, the only uses that
are discussed are those that are most closely related to English such as
#1-2 above, with brief forays into related uses like #3. On the other
hand, extremely common uses like #9 are often completely ignored,
because they don’t correspond to anything similar in English (cf. the
boat sank / el barco se hundió). As a result, even advanced
learners have great difficulty with the full range of [se] constructions
in Spanish.
As part of our more general survey of register
differences in Spanish syntax, we consider [se] in detail. This is the
first study to do so from a strongly corpus-based standpoint -- all
previous data-oriented investigations of [se] have used relatively small
corpora. We examine which of the uses are most frequent in the 20
million word corpus, and what variation exists between registers. This
data will hopefully provide useful insight for textbook authors and
others who wish to provide a more realistic discussion of [se] for
language learners.
|
