The pronominal coding of the patient in reflexive indefinite agent constructions in Peninsular Spanish

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the pronominalization of the patient in reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals in Peninsular Spanish. It is commonly agreed that only human patients can pronominalize in these contexts in Standard Peninsular Spanish. However, some varieties show full pronominalization of non-human patients. This paper aims to describe the geographical distribution of this pronominalization in Peninsular Spanish, together with the evolution of this phenomenon. Dialectal data allow describing the evolution of linguistic phenomena by means of investigating their geographical spreading in different contexts. The data contained in this paper show that the pronominalization of the patient in reflexive indefinite agent constructions (namely, reflexive passives and reflexive impersonals) is related to the animacy hierarchy, connecting this phenomenon with the more general category of agreement.