Spanish [auto + V + se] constructions

2.1 An overview of formations with auto- and with se

Traditionally, the (neo)classical origin of auto- has led to its morphological classification as a ‘prefixoid’ (Lang 1990), as it occurs in terms like autonomía ‘autonomy’. At the same time, it is a highly productive derivative prefix (Felíu 2003a, 2003b) that can be applied to lexical items belonging to all major word classes: verbal constructions, such as autoprogramarse ‘to program oneself’; nominal constructions, such as autopercepción ‘self-perception’ and autogol ‘own goal’; adjectival constructions, such as autolimitado ‘self-limited’ and autoadhesivo ‘self-adhesive’; and even adverbial constructions, such as autorreflexivamente ‘self-reflexively’, which stem from adjectival formations in -do/a (Felíu 2003a, 2003b; Orqueda and Squadrito 2017). These must be differentiated from the lexeme (Varela Ortega 2005) that occurs in, e.g. autismo ‘autism’ and the cases of composition that arise through shortening from automóvil ‘automobile’, such as autovía ‘highway’.

From a syntactic point of view, scholars do not always agree on whether this morphological process is capable of modifying the argumental structure. Thus, according to RAE and ASALE (2010: 176), auto- as well as entre- and co- are prefixes of argumental incidence and allow the emergence of new constructions with syntactic and valence constraints that may be different from those in the base. In turn, studies such as Felíu (2003a, 2003b) argue that these prefixes do not alter the valency of the base but instead establish a coreference relation between two arguments (semantic level).

From a functional point of view, the divergent characterization of these new formations – as a consequence of the values of the prefix mentioned above – has been extensively discussed in the literature, not only in Spanish (Felíu 2003a, 2005; Mendikoetxea 1999, among others; RAE and ASALE 2010) but also in other Romance languages such as Italian and French (Mutz 2003, 2011). However, scholars do not agree about the precise number and functionality of these formations. Thus, for example, some authors acknowledge only the reflexive formations (Varela Ortega 2005), as in (5), with certain syntactic constraints such as coreference and the information provided regarding the valency and the argumental structure:

Following Van Valin’s proposal (2001) on macroroles, a reflexive verb construction with both auto- and the clitic se (for example, autocriticarse ‘to criticize oneself’ or autorretratarse ‘to portray oneself’) is a case of coreference between the Actor and the Undergoer.^[4] In other words, these are cases of coreference between the external (X_i) and internal (Y_i) arguments [X_i, Y_i], where X and Y are two different but coreferential arguments. The reflexive use of auto- may indeed be reformulated with the verb + se + a sí mismo/a(s), as was seen in (2b). However, claiming that the reflexive is the only meaning expressed by [auto- + V + se] constructions would lead us to discard forms such as autoemocionarse ‘to get emotional oneself’, in which a distinction between Actor and Undergoer cannot be made. The problem is that even though constructions like autoemocionarse ‘to get emotional oneself’ or autodisolverse ‘self-dissolve’ are not as frequent as emocionarse or disolverse, they are still in use and widespread in the different Spanish dialects.

Within the range of non-reflexive constructions, auto- may also indicate reciprocity with a plural subject, as in (6a) below, which is confirmed by the possibility of rephrasing it with mutuamente ‘mutually’, as in (6b):

Yet other proposals point to the polyfunctional character of the prefix (e.g. Felíu 2005; Mendikoetxea 1999) and underline, in particular, the ability of the prefix to indicate the absence of a cause or external force, as was seen in (1b), and also as in (7) below:

These examples show that [auto- + V + se] constructions can express an anticausative meaning. It is true, however, that these constructions are more restricted because not all verbal classes may belong to this construction type.

Alternatively, studies such as Lang (1990) make special mention of the intensification nuance and call into question whether the prefix necessarily expresses reflexivity or whether the reflexive meaning already pre-existed in the base to which auto- is added,^[6] i.e. whether the semantic condition for the prefix is the reflexive character of the base to which it is attached (RAE and ASALE 2010). As a response to that, Felíu (2003a) argues that it is not entirely correct to suppose that there is a previous reflexive value, especially if nominal constructions that are not necessarily deverbal such as autobiografía ‘autobiography’ are considered. In fact, there are also cases with se that cannot be considered reflexive, neither in the prefixed construction nor in the non-prefixed base, as in (8):

In example (8), both a reflexive and an anticausative meaning must be ruled out. Instead, it is a transitive clause where auto- must be an intensifier and se something different.

The fact that the same prefix appears in such different constructions (reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative, and emphatic) is not unusual if we take into account functional typological proposals such as those of Haspelmath (2003), and König et al. (2013), who recognize the varied semantics and functions of reflexive markers.

The apparent overlapping of auto- with other strategies is seen in the fact that both the intensifying and the reflexive functions can also be expressed without the prefix and with the sí mismo strategy. This had led scholars to consider it a possible case of functional overlap, due to the shared anaphoric character, which occurs particularly in nominal formations. As the examples in (9) show, if these clauses are isolated, the construction with auto- must necessarily have a retrievable antecedent – the possessive in the case of (9b) – unless we take autobiografía as a text genre. There is a recoverable referent for auto- in (9b). In contrast, it is unknown whose biography it is in (9a).

However, the anaphoric character is not enough to determine the presence of auto-, as was seen in (8). Furthermore, although these are nominal formations, it is worth noting that examples as in (10a) are possible and documented while those as in (10c) are not, especially considering that both destrucción ‘destruction’ and infección ‘infection’ accept the reinforcement with sí mismo, as in (10b) and (10d) respectively:^[7]

This comparison shows that the non-agentive nature of the event’s first argument in autoinfección ‘self-infection’ (and not the possible paraphrasis by sí mismo) could explain the non-existence of examples like (10c).

Concerning the pronoun se (Gómez Torrego 1992; González Vergara 2006; Maldonado 1999; Montes Giraldo 2003),^[8] the literature agrees on its multifunctionality. Apart from its use as a reflexive strategy, this complex clitic is also found in a wide range of constructions. Some of them are: reciprocals (ellos se aman ‘they love each other’), impersonals (aquí se vive bien ‘one lives well here’), anticausatives (se abrió la puerta ‘the door opened itself’), and passives (se venden casas ‘houses are sold’). Besides, it is inherent to diverse intransitive and transitive pronominal verbs, like irse ‘to leave’, olvidarse ‘to forget’. Although the range of uses of the Spanish clitic se has expanded throughout the history of this language (e.g. Bogard 2006), its multifunctional nature was inherited from the Latin full pronoun se, which was used in reciprocal, reflexive and anticausative (Cennamo et al. 2015: 684) constructions already in Early and Classical Latin.

Regarding the comparison between [auto + V + se] constructions and [V + se] constructions, several authors propose, as already mentioned, a certain amount of functional similarity (Lang 1990; Mendikoetxea 1999; Varela Ortega 2005). The explanation given is that both processes (prefixing and the use of the se clitic) are used both in the formation of verbs with reflexive interpretation (sacrificarse/autosacrificarse ‘to sacrifice oneself’) and in the formation of anticausatives with absence of external agent (abrirse/autoadherirse ‘to open by itself/to adhere by itself’).

However, in contrast to [auto- + V (+ se)] constructions, which may be cases of intensification, non-prefixed constructions with se (e.g. sacrificarse) cannot be considered intensifiers. This distribution is coherent with the implicative generalization proposed by König and Siemund (2000: 59): “If a language uses the same expression both as an intensifier and as reflexive anaphor, this expression is not used as a marker of derived intransitivity or aspectual marker”. This would suggest that the intensifier marker should be auto-, while se is responsible for the intransitivity derivation. In other words, if the construction López se autocontrola los casinos ‘López controls his own casinos’ has an intensifying nuance, this value is provided by auto-, and not by se, because auto- can be used elsewhere as a reflexive marker but not as an intransitivizer, while se can be an intransitivizer but not an intensifier elsewhere. Following this generalization, it seems natural that in cases in which the subject is an Undergoer, as in (11), the intransitive derivation (anticausativity) is due to se and, consequently, the auto- prefix indicates something different:

Note that, within a narrow definition, it is impossible to assign a reflexive interpretation to (11), because it is a case of external argument reduction. These formations are very complex, so ambiguous readings or specific interferences may arise that make the classifications and analysis less clear. Other examples, such as (12), are interpreted as non-reflexive attributives or self-benefactives and indicate that the Actor performs the process by his or her own means or for himself/herself, being a beneficiary of the verbal basis:

2.2 A Construction Grammar approach to [auto- + V + se] structures

For this investigation, we used the model of Construction Grammar, based on the existence of constructions as basic units of analysis, i.e. form-meaning pairs (Traugott 2015), which are “pairings of form with semantic or discourse function, including morphemes or words, idioms, partially lexically filled and fully general phrasal patterns” (Goldberg 2006: 5). Concerning the new meanings associated with auto-, research has addressed how adding specific prefixes can affect the agentivity degree in the resulting constructions, either by increasing the agentivity of the arguments of the process or by decreasing it (Rooryck and Vanden Wyngaerd 2011). Synchronically, this framework allows us to analyse different languages from the notion of construction, and not from the notion of word, which can vary from one language to the other and whose limits are still diffuse.

Understanding a construction as “a form-meaning pairing in which the meaning of the whole is not derivable from the parts or a string whose meaning is predictable from its parts, but which occurs with sufficient frequency for it to be stored as a pattern” (Trousdale 2010: 52), let us consider the prefixed formations to be a new construction. Such a new construction has semantic and syntactic values not necessarily shared by the non-prefixed base. In this sense, verbal formations with auto- and the clitic se emerge as a specialization of non-prefixed constructions without the clitic se, with new values and semantic interpretations.

Furthermore, this model favours the connection between a synchronic and a diachronic perspective as the emergence of new constructions is due to the evolutionary process by which its schematicity, its productivity, and its non-compositionality are increased (Traugott 2015). Within this model, the emergence of a new pair is considered a “constructionalization”, that is, the rise of a new type of construction from others, with a “new syntax or morphology and new coded meaning, in the linguistic network of a population of speakers” (Traugott and Trousdale 2013: 22). In this sense, and following other proposals (Givón 2001; Haspelmath 2008), the new semantic features associated with the constructions with auto- arise in conjunction with new syntactic constraints.

Finally, we have also chosen this approach because it acknowledges the particular context of constructions for the analysis. We believe that considering the whole context of the new constructions is crucial for understanding the rise of new form-meaning pairs. This approach has a significant effect on the diachronic development because from a historical point of view grammaticization is not restricted only to the grammaticized element. “Instead, it is the grammaticizing element in its syntagmatic context, which is grammaticized. That is, the unit to which grammaticization properly applies to constructions, not isolated lexical items” (Himmelmann 2004: 31). Considering the context and a usage-based approach are fundamental for our research because the analysed units can be ambiguous in isolation and grant more than one interpretation depending on the context. In short, to thoroughly analyse the functioning and behaviour of these constructions, it is necessary to observe how they behave in their contexts of appearance, in order to show possible relations or decisive aspects.

2.3 A proposal for the distribution of constructions

As has been shown in the previous sections, pronominal constructions with or without auto- may fall into a range of different syntactic patterns: passive, impersonal, reflexive, reciprocal, anticausative, and transitive. Each type of construction can be identified according to not only the number of arguments but also the semantic macrorole associated with each one, which enables us to take into account both levels of analysis in an intrinsic relationship. Thus, while reflexive structures imply a higher degree of agentivity in the subject, by having an Actor, both passive and anticausative structures are expected to have a subject (Undergoer) with a low degree of agentivity.

From our point of view, Table 1 schematizes the distribution of functions among the three possible strategies (a. [V + se], b. [auto- + V + se], c. [auto- + V]):

Table 1 shows that [auto- + V + se] constructions are compatible with the reciprocal and reflexive functions because these have highly agentive Actors. In contrast, such constructions are not compatible with passives due to the non-agentive nature of Undergoers. In turn, anticausatives can be found in [auto- + V + se] constructions, but their subjects could be characterized as having more control over the event. As we will argue in the next pages, although the different strategies seem to overlap with each other in some functions of this schema, there is a clear continuum that relates these strategies with the semantic features of the the functions studied.

3.1 Sample

We applied a series of tests on two types of samples to evaluate differences between the constructions with and without the auto- prefix: (a) sample 1: 130 verbs extracted from a written corpus; (b) sample 2: linguistic assessments of Spanish speakers taken from their answers to a semi-directed interview.

In sample 1, we analysed 130 verbs extracted from the Modern Spanish Reference Corpus (CREA). CREA is composed of a wide range of oral and written texts from all Spanish-speaking countries and produced between 1975 and 2003.^[10] Given that the constructions studied were found in texts from practically all countries, we consider this a pan-dialectal phenomenon. Although some of the verbs obtained from the corpus were clearly coinages, others can be easily checked to be existing forms in simple searches on web pages from different geographical areas.

For the elaboration of the sample, we first collected the complete data of constructions prefixed with auto- from CREA, after the elimination of the cases in which auto- does not correspond to the prefix but to the neoclassical lexeme (autismo) or to the standard lexeme in compound words (autovía). From this first filter, we obtained 13,214 cases in total, distributed into adjectives (2494), verbs (1755), nouns (8953), and adverbs (12). As the object of the study was the analysis of verbal constructions, we created a random sample from those 1755 verbs, with a confidence level of 95% and a maximum margin of error of 4%. This filter resulted in 447 tokens in total, corresponding to 170 types, from which the non-pronominal forms had to be subtracted. The application of a new filter of erroneous cases or cases causing problems of interpretation helped us to reduce the sample to 130 instances of pronominalized verbs.

Regarding the semantic categorization of verbs, these were not studied independently but from the context in which the verbs appeared, following the proposal of Construction Grammar (Traugott 2015; Hoffmann and Trousdale 2013), in order to understand most of these new formations and their possible semantic and syntactic restrictions. Then, for the contrastive work, we selected the same verbs without auto-, also from CREA, with contexts as similar as possible, to be able to compare them and explore the semantic peculiarity of the prefixed formations.

Next, 41 semi-directed interviews conducted with adult speakers of the city of Santiago, Chile, constitute sample 2. The aim of using surveys was not to obtain a sociolinguistic characterization but rather to corroborate the data obtained from the written corpus because we started from the supposition that the phenomenon has spread in the different speech communities. In other words, we believe that this survey, although restricted to one specific variety, should confirm the results from sample 1, as long as this is a pan-dialectal phenomenon. It would be interesting, however, to corroborate this information in later studies.

Among other tests in the interviews, we asked the respondents to choose the more natural expression in cases of contrast between prefixed and non-prefixed constructions. In addition, we asked for respondents’ grammatical judgements (e.g. Do (a) and (b) mean the same?) and reformulation (e.g. What does this mean to you?).

3.2 Diagnostic tests

The selected sample of pronominal and prefixed forms was subjected to a series of tests of agentivity and quantification of certain features, such as the number of arguments, mainly extracted and adapted from the work of Lakoff (1966) and Dowty (1991). The aim of our agentivity tests was to analyse the behaviour of such formations in different semantic and syntactic contexts and to assess whether the constructions with auto- were interpreted as possessing a higher degree of agentivity, presenting, in particular, a higher degree of volition or control over the action. The tests that were applied and compared between constructions with and without the prefix, were the following (See Table 2):

In addition, we considered a series of semantic features that could be related to the existence of an Actor in the clauses in which the constructions appeared. Some of them show the existence of an Actor that makes a change from an Undergoer to a new state, put emphasis on the Actor’s responsibility in the performance of an action that is considered volitional (Dowty 1991), or indicate the existence of an agent as an energy source that produces changes by its action (Cruse 1973; Tsunoda 1999; Hundt 2004; Verhoeven 2010).

Although the initial aim of the tests was to detect stativity, they are useful for evaluating the agentivity scale of analysed constructions and thus distinguishing between agentive and non-agentive constructions. As Levin (2009: 8) points out, “several purported stativity tests are agentivity tests”. Therefore, if we think not in discrete or binary terms but instead in terms of a continuum of agentivity, we see that the higher the acceptance of tests is for the constructions concerned, the greater is the degree of agentivity, taking into account, of course, the contextual restraints on these constructions.

4.1 Results of the corpus analysis

As a first general result, we can state that not all tests are equally conclusive. They do, however, show a tendency to connect prefixed constructions with a higher degree of agentivity or control. In this section, we describe some of the tests applied to the sample individually, followed by the overall results.

4.2 Results from interviews

As stated above, this instrument aimed to verify results from the analysed corpus data by making use of Spanish native speakers. The primary outcome is that the interviews reveal a general tendency for cases with auto- to be considered more agentive, while non-prefixed constructions are more underspecified regarding control and agentivity as Tables 7 and 8 show.

As Tables 7 and 8 show speakers tend to prefer verb forms with auto- in unambiguous agentive, volitional, and animate/animized contexts. Furthermore, there is a tendency to perceive prefixed constructions as more intentional and involving more engaged Actor subjects. This became particularly clear when we asked speakers to explain or paraphrase the given sample. In most prefixed constructions, speakers opted for expressions highly marked for volition or responsible engagement, such as “the subject wanted to do x”, “he had the intention of performing x”, or “he was responsible for performing x”. In contexts that lacked these features or were ambiguous regarding them, speakers tended to choose the option without auto- as in (27):

4.3 Discussion

As has been shown extensively in this paper, pronominal constructions with auto- seem to relate to control and agentivity features more than those without the prefix. Although one may relate these features to the reflexive nature of (some of) these constructions, this is an oversimplification as agentivity and control features are similarly found in non-reflexive pronominal constructions with auto-:

The inanimate nature of the subject in (28) makes it impossible to consider it a reflexive construction, although the use of the prefix points to the absence of an external agent and the capacity of self-control by the clothes. Therefore, agentivity and control are not restricted to reflexive constructions.

Another piece of evidence that connects the agentivity feature to the presence of the prefix, and not merely to the reflexive nature of the construction, is that non-pronominal constructions such as those in (29a) and (29b) are also highly agentive:

(29a) and (29b) are transitive and display highly agentive subjects, which can only be due to the use of the prefix. It seems evident, therefore, that even when auto- is not necessarily by itself an agentivity or control prefix, verbal constructions with it are prone to acquire such values.

A third argument in favour of this interpretation comes from the comparison between autosuicidarse, literally ‘to self-commit suicide’, and automatarse ‘to self-kill’. Although we did not use these verbs in the interviews (as they did not come up in the sample), the widespread use of autosuicidarse on Internet websites in diverse Spanish varieties reveals the large spread of this phenomenon:

From a strictly normative point of view, it could be claimed that these are redundant formations because of the reflexive lexical nature of the verb suicidarse (confirmed by the incompatibility with a sí mismo/a). Still, Spanish speakers often prefer that option, thus granting the subject more control over the event. These constructions are primarily in contexts of online games as seen in (30a), suggesting a degree of greater control by the Actor because, in this way, participants may choose to leave the game. Something similar happens in (30c): the body of the text of this note further explains the possible causes that may have caused that person to take such a decision. In some cases, moreover, the expression acquires an ironic or ludic value indicating a character mocking the event. Finally, as seen in (30d), this construction appears frequently in political discourse, possibly disseminated in Latin America through a public commentary by former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

Compared to constructions with suicidarse ‘to commit suicide’, the prefix in constructions with automatarse is used to add an agentive and control feature and thus to disambiguate it from the accidental reading that is typically rendered by the verb matarse in Spanish:

The fourth and last argument comes from our review of proscriptions found in prescriptive texts. As the example below shows, the use of auto- in most of these constructions is usually blocked; this shows that there is a “need” to battle against the widespread “faulty” use of this prefix:

Another similar judgement can be found in “Cuando los autos chocan” (‘When autos crash’),^[16] where the journalist steadily complains about the “abuse” of this prefix in the press. These examples indicate that the normative idea is usually that auto- is incorrect or superfluous.

4.4 A possible explanation for agentive constructions with auto-

Although we find the use of auto- in verbs early in the history of Spanish, the vitality of these particular pronominal agentive constructions is recent and relates to another ongoing change that affects non-prefixed constructions only with se. As was stated earlier in this paper, constructions with se are highly polysemous because they allow many diverse interpretations (reciprocal, reflexive, anticausative, and so forth). It is plausible, therefore, that the use of the prefix arose as a way to disambiguate, in parallel with the already existing reinforcement by the prepositional phrase a sí mismo/a(s). This hypothesis is in line with the claim that constructions with se show a decrease of the Actor’s relevance and the subsequent privileging of the Undergoer on the semantic level of the clause. Thus, as González Vergara (2014: 156) concludes from a Role and Reference Grammar approach, “constructions with se display the non-specification of the highest-ranking role in the logical structure”. If this is the case, we can expect that the prefix seeks the opposite effect.

It is also interesting to compare verbal and nominal constructions, with and without auto-. The noun reproche ‘reproach’, for instance, is not as ambiguous regarding the valency as is the verb reprocharse because the verbal construction can be both reflexive and transitive. The prefix in the noun autorreproche probably does not function necessarily as a disambiguating device as it does in autorreprocharse. The reflexive reading is less controversial, therefore, in nominal formations than it is in verbal formations.

The tremendous ambiguity of se and the possible solutions in Spanish have different parallels in other Romance languages. An ongoing tendency is the one found in Brazilian Portuguese, where the se clitic is dropped as a disambiguating device: “the null se construction is more associated with cognition middles, change of posture, anticausatives, passive-impersonal and impersonal domains […] Those event types that imply a high degree of control tend to occur with overt se constructions” (Afonso and Soares da Silva 2019: 22). Interestingly enough, se began to be dropped in some recent instances in Spanish too, as in the new unergative entrenar (‘to train oneself’), as a recent development from a previous transitive counterpart (‘to train someone’) to entrenarse (‘to train oneself’): “The intransitive non-pronominal construction is also admitted, which prevails in current usage” (RAE and ASALE 2005, s.v. entrenar(se), translation ours).