Alfredo Garcia-Pardo (University of Southern California)
Change of state and location with light verbs: the case of Spanish poner(se) and quedar(se)
Goals: This work analyzes the syntax of the semantics of the Spanish light verbs ponerse
‘become, lit. put.SELF’ and quedar(se) ‘become/ remain, lit. stay.SELF’ with APs and PPs,
focusing on the former. On the basis of their syntactic behavior, I argue that these verbs do not
have the same syntax when they select PPs as when they select APs, contra what is often
assumed. My analysis also provides an explanation of why the reflexive se allows for an
agentive interpretation of the subject and why such reflexive is unavailable with adjectival
participles derived from transitive verbs.
The data: <Ponerse/quedarse + AP> are change of state (c-o-s) structures (cf. (1)). In addition,
<quedarse + AP> may also appear in stative constructions as shown in (2). With adjectival
participles, only quedar is acceptable, and does not admit the reflexive se (cf. (3)). Furthermore,
as observed by Demonte & Masullo (1999), the clitic se allows for an agentive reading of the
subject with quedarse (cf. (4)).
(1) a. Pedro se puso {alto/ fuerte/ rojo}.
“Pedro became {tall/ strong/ red}”.
b. Ana se quedó {pálida/ delgada/ ciega}
“Ana became {pale/ thin/ blind}”.
(2) Julián se quedó despierto toda la noche.
“Julián stayed awake all night”.
(3) La situación (*se) quedó cuidadosamente aclarada por las autoridades.
“The situation got carefully explained by the authorities”.
(4) El hombre *(se) quedó quieto sin moverse mientras la enfermera le extraía sangre.
“The man remained still without moving while the nurse drew blood from him”.
Previous accounts: In their discussion of deadjectival and denominal verbs, Hale & Keyser
(2002) argue that change-of-location (c-o-l) light verbs with PPs and denominal verbs, and c-o-s
light verbs with APs and deadjectival verbs share the same syntactic structure, respectively: one
involves a spell-out of a V head (the light verb) and the other involves incorporation of lexical
items to V (N-to-P-to-V in the case of denominal verbs and A-to-V in the case of deadjectival
verbs). Pushing this idea further, authors like Gumiel, Nieto & Pérez (1999) and Mateu (2002,
2012) propose that c-o-s and c-o-l structures share a common syntax, built by a complex
terminal coincidence PP (cf. Hale & Keyser 2002) that relates a Figure (the subject DP) to a
Ground (PP/AP). This captures the intuition that both structures share a common meaning of
change, either towards a location or to a state. Also, it sheds light on why it is that oftentimes
languages show the same light verb in c-o-s and c-o-l contexts (cf. Zubizarreta & Oh 2007 for
English go and Korean ka- “go”, and Mateu 2002, 2012 for Spanish poner(se)). If correct, the
prediction is that c-o-s and c-o-l will have the same syntactic behavior, all things being equal.
At least for Spanish, however, this view is problematic. First, c-o-l poner “put” does not
participate in the anticausative alternation (cf. (5)), but c-o-s poner(se) does (cf. (6)).
Furthermore, transitive c-o-l poner necessary requires an agentive subject (cf.(7a)). C-o-s poner,
on the other hand, can have a wider array of subjects (agents, instruments and causers, cf. (7b)).
Finally, quedar(se) can only be stative with a locative PP (cf. (8)). With an AP, however, it can
be both resultative (c-o-s) and stative, as shown in (1b) and (2). These data suggest, in my
opinion, that the analysis of these light verbs with APs and PPs must be kept separate.
(5) a. Juan puso la botella en la nevera.
“Juan put the bottle in the fridge”.
b. *La mota de polvo se puso en la estantería.
“*The dustball put on the shelf”.
(6) La tormenta puso el cielo gris.
“The storm made the sky gray.”
(7) a. {El gamberro/ *el tractor/ *la tormenta} puso escombros en la carretera.
“{The urchin/ *the tractor/ *the storm} put debris on the road”.
b. {Carmen/ la sierra/ la tormenta} puso a Victoria histérica.
“{Carmen/ the saw/ the storm} made Victoria very upset”.
(8) a. Pedro se quedó en México durante todo el fin de semana.
“Pedro stayed in Mexico all weekend.”
b. *Gerardo se quedó a México en cinco horas.
“*Gerardo stayed to Mexico in five hours.”
The analysis: I propose that c-o-s poner(se) and quedar(se) head a vCAUS head (cf.
Anagnostopoulou et al. 2006, Schäfer 2012) that, combined with a PredP (a stative small clause
consisting of the adjective and its argument, cf. Baker (2003)), introduces the resultative
semantics. I follow the lines of reflexivization analyses of anticausatives (Mendikoetxea: 2000)
and assume that reflexives and anticausatives share a common structure (at least in Spanish).
The locus of se is then Voice in the context of an external argument co-referent with an internal
one.
For the stative structure of quedar(se), I argue that it heads a vBE, a stative verbal head (cf.
Cuervo: 2003). Again, the presence of the reflexive se signals the presence of an external
argument in (Spec,VoiceP). If stative VoiceP introduces a stative causation (cf. Arad: 2002 for
object-experiencer verbs), and is absent in verbal predicates which do not (eg. cost, own, cf.
Hale & Keyser: 2002), then Demonte & Masullo’s (1999) observation that se allows for an
agentive interpretation of the subject is accounted for.
As noted above, adjectival participles derived from transitive verbs necessarily appear with
quedar, without a reflexive clitic. My proposal is that quedar structures only involve vCAUS/BE,
where the verb is merged, but not Voice. This follows if Voice introduces causers (of c-o-s or
states): having the theme of the verb (or a DP coreferent with it) in (Spec,VoiceP) a Note that,
if the adjectival participle merged with quedarse, the sentence would be interpreted as the theme
having caused the state it is in (whichever the result state of the underlying verbal predicate is),
which of course gives us the wrong meaning. This account allows genuine adjectives from
appearing without reflexive se too, as in fact happens:
(9) a. El Papa no vino y la silla quedó vacía.
“The Pope did not come and his chair remained empty”.
b. Pedro quedó ciego por el accidente.
“Pedro became blind due to the accident”.
Conclusion: This work has provided a formal syntactic account of poner(se) and quedar(se)
with adjectives that explain some properties of these constructions previously unaccounted for,
such as the possibility of an agentive reading with se and its unavailability with adjectival
participles. In so doing, I have addressed the general question as to what the grammatical status
of light verbs is, concluding that, at least for poner(se) and quedar(se), they are not just spellouts of eventive structure, but are lexical items with their own idiosyncratic behavior.
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