Grammatical encoding of agency in Asturian middle constructions

Abstract

Middle-passive constructions in Asturian –a Romance language spoken in the diglossic region of Asturias, in northern Spain– appear to optionally allow the occurrence of the reflexive pronoun se in them (esti pan esmigáya(se) fácil; ‘this bread crumbles easily’); this has been traditionally considered a pleonastic use of the reflexive due to the influence of Spanish, i.e. the dominant language in the territory (ALLA 2001). Here, I claim that the presence of such pronoun is not optional; instead, I argue that this clitic spells out a passive Voice head encoding the participation of an implicit generic agent/experiencer in the event, giving rise to a generic se-passive configuration. The se-less counterpart, on the contrary, is only possible with unaccusative verbs and those undergoing the causative alternation, thus resulting in a generic inchoative configuration. Among the evidence I present supporting this claim is the fact that only the reflexive variant can control into a purpose clause, but it does not license the insertion of the PP por sí mesmu (‘by itself’); this is quite the opposite of what happens with the se-less counterpart. Additionally, I explain that the presence/absence of the reflexive in middle contexts in Asturian and Asturian Spanish may be subject to crosslinguistic influence; therefore, several cases of linguistic transfer between Asturian and Asturian Spanish are teased apart and discussed.