Article published in:
Non-Nuclear Cases
Edited by Nicole Delbecque, Karen Lahousse and Willy Van Langendonck
[Case and Grammatical Relations Across Languages 6] 2014
► pp. 217–318

Passive Voice and Causal Roles in Spanish

This paper focuses on oblique variation in the passive. It relies on insights on causal modeling to study the construction types available to express a passive or medio-passive meaning in Spanish. Oblique variation is argued to fulfill an important function in the profiling of the relation between agent and patient, causer and causee, affectant and affectee. The choice of the preposition is shown to function as a device for agenthood management. Based on distributional evidence, the systematic survey of representative corpus examples with the four most frequent prepositions (por ‘by, through’, en ‘in’, de ‘of, from’ and con ‘with’) sheds light on issues related to the prototypicity and nuclearity of participant relations in passive and medio-passive construals.
Published online: 17 December 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/cagral.6.07del
References

References

Bosque, Ignacio
1999 “El sintagma adjetival. Modificadores y complementos del adjetivo. Adjetivo y participio.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 217-310. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Brugman, Claudia
1981 Story of Over. MA thesis, University of California at Berkeley. (Published in 1988 as The story of Over: Polysemy, semantics, and the structure of the lexicon. New York: Garland.)Google Scholar
Cano Aguilar, Rafael
1981 Estructuras sintácticas transitivas en el español actual. Madrid: Editorial Gredos.Google Scholar
Comrie, Bernard
1981 Language universals and linguistic typology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Conti Jiménez, Carmen
2004 Papeles semánticos (instrumento y comitativo). Madrid: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid.Google Scholar
Cornelis, Louise H.
1997 Passive and perspective. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi.Google Scholar
Croft, William
1991 Semantics categories and grammatical relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
1998 “Event structure in argument linking.” In The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors, ed. by Miriam Butt, and Wilhelm Geuder, 21-63. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
2001 Radical Construction Grammar. Syntactic Theory in Typological Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Croft, William, and D. Alan Cruse
2004 Cognitive linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
De Kock, Josse, and Carmen Gómez Molina
1990 Las formas pronominales del verbo y la pasiva. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar
DeLancey, Scott
1984 “Notes on Agentivity and Causation.” Studies in Language 8 (2): 181-213. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Delbecque, Nicole
1996 “Towards a Cognitive Account of the Use of the Prepositions Por and Para in Spanish.” In Cognitive Linguistics in the Redwoods, The Expansion of a New Paradigm in Linguistics, ed. by Eugene Casad, 249-318. New York/Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
2002 “A construction grammar approach to transitivity in Spanish.” In The Nominative/Accusative. Case and Grammatical Relations across Language Boundaries, ed. by Kristin Davidse, and Béatrice Lamiroy, 81-130. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2003 “La variable expresión del agente en las construcciones pasivas.” Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica LI 2: 373-416.Google Scholar
2004 “Verbos de respuesta: análisis léxico-construccional.” In Estudios de Lingüística: El verbo, ed. by José Luis Cifuentes Honrubia, and Carmen Marimón Llorca, 119-165. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante.Google Scholar
2005 “El análisis de corpus al servicio de la gramática funcional y cognoscitiva. Hacia una interpretación de la alternancia lineal sujeto-verbo/verbo-sujeto.” In Variación sintáctica en español: un reto para las teorías de la sintaxis, ed. by Gabriele Knauer, and Valeriano Bellosta von Colbe, 51-74. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
2008 “Spanish (de)queísmo: part/whole alternation and viewing arrangement.” In Asymmetric Events, ed. by Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk, 51-84. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: J. Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Delbecque, Nicole, and Béatrice Lamiroy
1996 “Towards a typology of the Spanish dative.” In The Dative. Descriptive Studies, ed. by William Van Belle, and Willy Van Langendonck, 73-117. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Delbecque, Nicole
1999 “La subordinación sustantiva: Las subordinadas enunciativas en los complementos verbales.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 1965-2081. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
DeMello, George
1997 “Verbo pronominal con por + agente.” In Lengua escrita y habla culta en América y España, ed. by Josse De Kock, and George DeMello, 127-133. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca.Google Scholar
De Miguel, Elena
1999 “El aspecto léxico.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 2977-3060. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Dowty, David
1991 “Thematic protoroles and argument selection.” Language 67 (3): 547-619. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Du Bois, John
1987 “The discourse basis of ergativity.” Language 63: 805–852. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fernández Ramírez, Salvador
1986 Gramática española. 4. El verbo y la oración. Volumen ordenado y completado por I. Bosque. Madrid: Arco / Libros S.A.Google Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J.
1982 “Frame semantics.” In Linguistics in the morning calm, ed. by Linguistic Society of Korea, 111–137. Seoul: Hanshin. Reprinted in Cognitive Linguistics: Basic Readings (2006), ed. by D. Geeraerts, 373-400. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
1988 “The Mechanisms of Construction Grammar.” Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistic Society 14: 35-55. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Fillmore, Charles J., Paul Kay, and Mary Kay O'Connor
1988 “Regularity and idiomaticity in grammatical constructions: The case of let alone.” Language 64 (3): 501–538. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
García, Erica
1975 The Role of Theory in Linguistic Analysis: the Spanish Pronoun System. Amsterdam/New York: North-Holland/American Elsevier.Google Scholar
García-Miguel, José María
1995 Las relaciones gramaticales entre predicado y participantes. Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela.Google Scholar
Geeraerts, Dirk, and Hubert Cuyckens
2007 “Introducing Cognitive Linguistics.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Dirk Geeraerts, and Hubert Cuyckens, 3-21. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Givón, Talmy
1979 On Understanding Grammar. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar
1993 The pragmatics of voice: functional and typological aspects. Reader 2, IFOTT lectures Amsterdam, May 24-28.Google Scholar
Goldberg, Adele E.
1995 Constructions: A construction grammar approach to argument structure. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
2006 Constructions at Work. The Nature of Generalization in Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Green, John N.
1975 “On the Frequency of Passive Constructions in Modern Spanish.” Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 52 (4): 345-362. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Herskovits, Annette
1986 Language and spatial cognition. An interdisciplinary study of the prepositions in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hopper, Paul J., and Sandra A. Thompson
1980 “Transitivity in Grammar and Discourse.” Language 56 (2): 251-299. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Keenan, Edward L.
1985 “Passive in the world's languages.” In Language Typology and Syntactic Description, Vol.1 (Clause Structure), ed. by T. Shopen, 243-281. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.Google Scholar
Kitillä, Seippo
2002 “Remarks on the basic transitive sentence.” Language Sciences 24: 107-130. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Lakoff, George
1977 “Linguistic Gestalts.” Papers form the Thirteenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society , 236-287.
1987 Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W.
1982 “Space Grammar, Analysability, and the English Passive.” Language 58 (1): 22-80. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
1987 Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I: Theoretical Prerequisites. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
1991a Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume II: Descriptive Application. Stanford: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
1991b Concept, Image, and Symbol. The Cognitive Basis of Grammar. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2000 “A dynamic usage-based model.” In Usage-based models of language, ed. by Michael Barlow, and Suzanne Kemmer, 1–63. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Langacker, Ronald W., and Pamela Munro
1975 “Passives and their meaning.” Language 51: 789-830. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Levin, Beth, and Malka Rappaport Hovav
1995 Unaccusativity: At the syntax-lexical semantics interface. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Luraghi, Silvia
1995 “Prototypicality and Agenthood in Indo-European.” In Historical Linguistics 1993. Selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Los Angeles, 16-20 August 1993, ed. by Henning Andersen, 259-268. Amsterdam/New York: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2001 “Syncretism and the classification of semantic roles.” Sprachtypologie und Universalienforschung 54/1: 35-51.Google Scholar
Lyons, John
1991 Natural language and universal grammar. Essays in linguistic theory, volume I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Maldonado, Ricardo
1999 A media voz. Problemas conceptuales del clítico se. México: UNAM.Google Scholar
2002 “Objective and subjective datives.” Cognitive Linguistics 13 (1): 1-65. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Martín Zorraquino, Mª Antonia
1979 Las construcciones pronominales en español. Paradigma y desviaciones. Madrid: Gredos.Google Scholar
Mendikoetxea, Amaya
1999a “Construcciones inacusativas y pasivas.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 1575-1633. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
1999b “Construcciones con se: Medias, pasivas e impersonales.” In Gramática Descriptiva de la Lengua Española, ed. by Ignacio Bosque, and Violeta Demonte, 1631-1722. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Nishida, Chiyo
1994 “The Spanish Reflexive Clitic se as an Aspectual Class Marker.” Linguistics 32 (3): 425-458. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Nishimura, Yoshiki
1993 “Agentivity in cognitive grammar.” In Conceptualizations and mental processing in language, ed. by Richard A. Geiger, and Brygida Rudzka-Ostyn, 487-530. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Pearl, Judea
2000 Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Premack, David, and Ann James Premack
1995 “Intention as psychological cause.” In Causal cognition. A multidisciplinary debate, ed. by D. Sperber, D. Premack, and A.J. Premack, 185-199. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Primus, Beatrice
1999 Cases and Thematic Roles. Ergative, Accusative and Active. Tübingen: Niemeyer. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Prince, Ellen
1996 Constructions and the Syntax-Discourse Interface. University of Pennsylvania. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Radden, Günter
1985 “Spatial metaphors underlying prepositions of causality.” In The ubiquity of metaphor: Metaphor in language and thought, ed. by W. Wolf Paprotte, and R. Dirven, 177-207. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Real Academia Española
s.d. Banco de datos CREA (Corpus de referencia del español actual). http://​www​.rae​.es [on line consultation October 2008 - September 2010].
Real Academia Española and Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española
2009 Nueva Gramática de la Lengua Española. Madrid: Espasa.Google Scholar
Sánchez López, Cristina
2002 Las construcciones con se. Madrid: Visor Libros.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Izchak M.
1995 Cognitive space and linguistic case. Semantic and syntactic categories in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Shibatani, Masayoshi
1985 “Passives and related constructions: a prototype analysis.” Language 61: 821-848. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
(ed.) 1988 Passive and Voice (Typological Studies in Language, Volume 16). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Talmy, Leonard
1988 “Force dynamics in language and cognition.” Cognitive Science 12: 49-100. (Expanded version published in Leonard Talmy 2000, 409-470.) CrossrefGoogle Scholar
2000 Toward a Cognitive Semantics, Vol. I: Concept Structuring Systems. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Taylor, John R.
19952. Linguistic categorization. Prototypes in linguistic theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Google Scholar
Tsunoda, Tasaku
1985 “Remarks on transitivity.” Journal of Linguistics 21: 385-396. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Vandeloise, Claude
1986 L'espace en francais. Paris: Editions Du Seuil.Google Scholar
1991 Spatial prepositions: A case study from French. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
1994 “Methodology and Analysis of the Preposition in.” Cognitive Linguistics 5 (2): 157-184. CrossrefGoogle Scholar
Van Langendonck, Willy
2007 “Iconicity.” In The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics, ed. by Dirk Geeraerts, and Hubert Cuyckens, 394-418. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Van Oosten, Jeanne
1986 The Nature of Subjects, Topics and Agents: A Cognitive Explanation. Bloomington: IULC.Google Scholar
Vázquez Rozas, Victoria
2007 “A usage-based approach to prototypical transitivity.” In On Interpreting Construction Schemas. From Action and Motion to Transitivity and Causality, ed. by Nicole Delbecque, and Bert Cornillie, 17-38. Berlin/New York, Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Wilson, Deirdre, and Dan Sperber
2005 “Relevance theory.” In Handbook of Pragmatics, ed. by Gregory L. Ward, and Laurence R. Horn, 607-632. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Zwicky, A.M.
1987 “Constructions in monostratal syntax.” Papers from the 23rd Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society, 389-401.