Chapter published in:
Contrastive Studies in Verbal Valency
Edited by Lars Hellan, Andrej L. Malchukov and Michela Cennamo
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 237] 2017
► pp. 376–406

Pronominal verbs across European languages

What Spanish alternating pronominal verbs reveal

This work studies pronominal verbs in different European Languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, German, Polish, and Rumanian. It proposes a classification of such verbs on the ground of distributional terms. More specifically, the classification pivots on whether the pronominal particle is compulsory or not for the predicate to be grammatical. Besides, other subtypes are defined by taking into account other factors like whether the verb enters any transitive-intransitive alternation such as the causative-inchoative or the transitive-reflexive, and if so, what thematic role the external subject of the transitive alternate bears (cause, instrument, or agent). Cross-linguistic variation is found across the covered languages as to which verb classes fit into the proposed classification of pronominal verbs in different languages. We focus on Spanish alternating pronominal verbs and put forward a theoretical analysis that contributes to accounting for the cross-linguistic variation in pronominal verbs attested in different languages.
Published online: 30 April 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.237.12teo
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