Springer Unraveling the complexity of SE: 99 (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 99)

This book makes a novel contribution to our understanding of Romance SE constructions by combining both diachronic and synchronic theoretical perspectives along with a range of empirical data from different languages and dialects. The collection, divided into four sections, proposes that SE constructions may be divided into one class that is the result of grammaticalization of a reflexive pronoun up the syntactic tree, from Voice and above, and another class that has resulted from the reanalysis of reflexive and anticausative morphemes as an argument expletive or verbal morpheme generated in positions from Voice and below. The contributions, while varied in both empirical content and theoretical approach, all serve to highlight different aspects of the overarching idea that SE constructions have evolved from these two distinct grammaticalization paths. The book appeals to researchers and academics in the field and closes with a unified approach to various SE constructions that makes important use of its status as a verbal morpheme. In addition to aligning a novel string of empirical contributions under a new theoretical umbrella, a clear research direction emerges from this volume based on the morphosyntactic nature of SE itself: Is it a clitic, an agreement morpheme, or a verbal morpheme?      From the Back Cover This book makes a novel contribution to our understanding of Romance SE constructions by combining both diachronic and synchronic theoretical perspectives along with a range of empirical data from different languages and dialects. The collection, divided into four sections, proposes that SE constructions may be divided into one class that is the result of grammaticalization of a reflexive pronoun up the syntactic tree, from Voice and above, and another class that has resulted from the reanalysis of reflexive and anticausative morphemes as an argument expletive or verbal morpheme generated in positions from Voice and below. The contributions, while varied in both empirical content and theoretical approach, all serve to highlight different aspects of the overarching idea that SE constructions have evolved from these two distinct grammaticalization paths. The book appeals to researchers and academics in the field and closes with a unified approach to various SE constructions that makes important use of its status as a verbal morpheme. In addition to aligning a novel string of empirical contributions under a new theoretical umbrella, a clear research direction emerges from this volume based on the morphosyntactic nature of SE itself: Is it a clitic, an agreement morpheme, or a verbal morpheme?        About the Author Grant Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research is focused on the Morphology and Syntax of Spanish and Mayan languages. He has published numerous articles on these topics in journals such as The Linguistic Review, Probus, Studies in Hispanic & Lusophone Linguistics and as chapter contributions to edited volumes in series' published by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, John Benjamins, and Springer. Jonathan E. MacDonald is Associate Professor of Linguistics and of Spanish & Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His general research area lies in the domain of theoretical syntax, with a specific focus on Romance SE constructions, and inner aspect. His work has appeared in journals such as Linguistic Inquiry, Syntax, Journal of Linguistics, and Probus, as well as numerous contributions in volumes edited by Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, John Benjamins, among others.