Re: OT: Spanish pronouns ("usted", etc.)

On Thu, 17 May 2007 18:45:13 -0400, Javier BF <uaxuctum@...> wrote:
>[...] Spanish further blurs the morphological distinction of direct and
>indirect objects by marking dative phrases with the preposition
>"a" (to), but also animate-referent accusatives so as to prevent
>semantic ambiguity between subject and object given that word
>order is not enough unlike in English ("El perro mordió a Juan"
>or "A Juan mordió el perro" meaning "The dog bit John",
>vs. "Al perro mordió Juan" or "Juan mordió al perro" meaning
>"John bit the dog").
Payne in _Describing Morphosyntax_ says the _a_ only appears when the object
noun phrase is referential:
_Estoy buscando una empleada_ 'I'm looking for a housekeeper (any
housekeeper will do)'
vs.
_Estoy buscando a una empleada_ 'I'm looking for (someone, who happens to
be) a housekeeper'.
Is this the case?  Does that mean that there could be cases with ambiguity
between subject and object, if the word order is free that way?

On Thu, 17 May 2007 19:15:02 -0500, Eric Christopherson <rakko@...>
wrote:
>On May 17, 2007, at 5:45 PM, Javier BF wrote:
>> Additionally, the form "se" has many other uses apart from
>> 3rd-person reflexive, such as marking medial-voice and
>> impersonal verbal forms; particularly, it replaces the dative
>> "le[s]" when followed by an accusative to avoid cacophonic
>> alliteration (*le las doy > se las doy, *les lo dije > se lo dije).
>
>Is that a mainstream interpretation of the allophones? As I
>understand it, etymologically, "se lo" etc. come from ILLI ILLUM etc.
>by mostly regular sound changes, without avoidance of cacophony as a
>"motivation". On the other hand, if at some point both *"le lo" and
>"se lo" were available to speakers, they might commonly choose "se
>lo" for that reason.
Just sound change?  That's surprising.  How does ILLI ILLUM generate an /s/?

Alex

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