Construcciones transitivas en español con clítico paradigmático, no reflexivo, concordado con el sujeto y no modificador de la estructura oracional. El clítico enfático

Abstract

The starting point of this work is a Spanish transitive construction hosting what most of the recent literature considers an optional dative clitic with aspectual value. These are structures featuring what some authors call a paradigmatic se, where, on the one hand, the pronominal form agrees in number and person with the subject but does not exhibit the typical doubling of the reflexive clitic by means of a tonic personal pronoun introduced by the preposition a, and where, on the other, the DO must be quantified or definite –which requires a nominal determiner– and the predicate must generally be both telic and durative (Juan se comió los bocadillos (*a sí)). We here argue for the unfeasibility of an isolated analysis of this type of constructions, specifically, one that does not relate them to other perfectly grammatical ones that coincide with them in being transitive and in featuring clitics that fail to modify the syntactic-semantic structure of the sentence, but which differ from them in lacking a quantified DO and a predicate that is telic and durative at the same time (Juan se comió enormes bocadillos de jamón durante la cena, Este año ya me he cruzado la frontera varias veces, El alumno se supo la lección). Our main goals are two: 1) to put forth a critical review of the proposals that advocate a characterization of the clitic as an aspectual operator, or posit an intentional involvement of the sentential subject or a closer relationship between the subject and the DO, and 2) to develop an original and alternative account where, on the one hand, a common value is assigned to all the non-reflexive clitics that agree with the subject, are compatible with the transitive constructions and fail to change their syntactic-semantic structure, and where, on the other, the factors constraining the occurrence of these clitics are elucidated.