The ambiguous status of Spanish reflexive se: evidence from child language
Sergio Baauw & Ilse Meerkerk (Universiteit Utrecht)
The Spanish reflexive se has been claimed to be a reflexive-marking morpheme, unlike Dutch
zich, which is often taken to be a pronominal element (Reinhart & Reuland 1993; Reuland
2001; Reinhart & Siloni 2005). In this talk we provide some evidence from child language in
support of an alternative view, which claims that Spanish se is a pronominal element in some
syntactic contexts, in particular ECM contexts, and a reflexive-marker in others (Baauw
2000). The literature on the acquisition of local reflexives generally indicates that children
hardly have any problems with the interpretation of reflexives. Chien & Wexler (1990)
showed that English 5-year-olds accepted the non-coreferential interpretation of (1) only 10%
of the time. McKee (1992) obtained similar results for both English (2) and Italian 5-year-olds
that were tested on their interpretation of si (3). Spanish children have no problems with the
interpretation of the reflexives se either (Baauw 2000). Finally, Sigurjonsdottir & Coopmans
(1996) report that 83% of Dutch 5-year-olds reject an extra-clausal referent of the simple
reflexive zich and 92% rejected an extra clausal referent of the complex reflexive zichzelf.
(1) Mama bear is touching herself
(2) While the clown was sitting down, Roger Rabbit covered himself.
(3) Mentre la gnoma cantava, la puffetta si copriva.
while the gnome sang the smurfette SE covered
These results indicate that children generally reject an extra-sentential interpretation of
reflexives. However, more recent experimental evidence in which children were tested on the
c-command requirement of reflexives, indicates that their performance on some reflexives is
not that perfect. Although Avrutin & Cunningham (1997) showed that English speaking
children were highly targetlike on (4), Avrutin & Coopmans (1999) showed that Dutch
children often allowed the reflexive zich to refer to the non-c-commanding antecedent in
sentences such as (5) 47% of the time. Their performance on the complex reflexive zichzelf,
on the other hand, was highly targetlike.
(4) The man near the boy was washing himself.
(5) De boerin naast de prinses wast zich / zichzelf
The farmer’s-wife next to the princess washes SE / SELF
Children's poor performance on zich was confirmed by an elicited production experiment by
Baauw, Kuiper, Ruigendijk & Cuetos (2006), who showed that Dutch 5-year-olds used zich in
only 40% of the contexts eliciting zich, while adults used it 70% of the time in the same
contexts. Interestingly, the same study showed that Spanish children produced se 80% of the
time, just like adults. This contrast between Dutch zich and Spanish se was confirmed by
Meerkerk (2010) in a spontaneous production study; Dutch children hardly produced zich,
while Spanish children often produced reflexive se.
Baauw et al. (2006) follow Reuland (2001) and Avrutin (2004) to explain Dutch children's
poor performance on zich. According to Reuland (2001) zich is a pronominal element
underspecified for [number], which establishes a checking relation with a local DP. As a
result of this checking relation a referential dependency, in the form of an A-Chain is
established (6):
(6) Jan waste zich.
|
A-Chain |
'John washed SE'
Avrutin (2004) argues that young children often have problems with the use of syntactic
operations to convey meaning. Since A-Chains are a referential dependency formed in
“narrow syntax”, it is expected that children will have problems with the use of pronominal
elements that enter into A-Chains. The more targetlike production by Spanish children of se
can be explained if we assume that se is not a pronominal element but a reflexive-marking
morpheme; if se is not a pronominal element, no A-Chain is formed, which means that
children will not show difficulties with the production and interpretation of reflexive
structures involving se (Baauw 2000).
However, according to Baauw (2000), Spanish se is pronominal in ECM sentences,
such as (7):
(7) María se ve bailar
María SE sees dance
Baauw (2000) argues that if se is a reflexive-marking morpheme in (7), it reflexive-marks
either the main clause verb ve ‘sees’, since it is in the functional domain of that verb, or a
complex predicate formed by ve and bailar. Reflexive-marking of ve clearly leads to the
wrong result: the verb ve is not a reflexive predicate; the external argument [María] is not
identified with its internal argument [x bailar]. Since ECM constructions such as (7) must
have a [Spec, AgrS] position, in order to host the external argument of bailar, complex
predicate formation is not possible (Guasti 1993). If se, on the other hand, is a pronominal
clitic, identified with a pronominal null element in [Spec, AgrS] (Sportiche 1992), no
reflexive predicate formation takes place. Instead, the identification of the subject of the
embedded clause with the main clause subject is the result of A-Chain formation between the
null subject of the embedded clause and the main clause subject María (Reuland 2001).
Baauw (2000) showed that Spanish children performed highly adultlike on the
interpretation of sentences such as (7). However, in these sentences there is only one potential
sentence internal antecedent: María. In order to compare Spanish children’s performance on
se in ECM sentences with Dutch children’s performance on zich, se should be tested in
contexts in which there is more than one potential sentence internal antecedent, as Avrutin &
Coopmans (1999) did for Dutch zich. Therefore we designed an Picture Verification
experiment in which we tested 23 5-year-old Spanish speaking children on sentences such as
(8) and (9):
(8) La mamá de la chica se lava
the mother of the girl SE washes
(9) La abuela de la chica se ve bailar
the grandmother of the girl SE sees dance
simple transitive
ECM
The results showed that Spanish children performed 69% of the time targetlike on simple
transitive sentences like (8), rejecting an interpretation in which the mother is washing the
girl. The non-targetlike reading, in which the grandmother sees the girl dance, is rejected only
39% of the time in (9). This difference was statistically significant (p = 0,004).
These results provide evidence for the claim that se in ECM sentences such as (9) is a
pronominal element similar to Dutch zich, which establishes an A-Chain with a local DP.
Like Dutch children, Spanish children often fail to establish this chain. In simple transitive
sentences, such as (8), on the other hand, se should be analyzed as a reflexive-marking
morpheme. Since no chain is formed, children will perform more targetlike. Finally, we will
provide an explanation for why children perform less perfect on (8) than on simple transitive
sentences with a non-complex subject, such as La mamá se lava 'The mother SE washes'.