Non-Pronominal Intransitive Verb Variants with Property Interpretation: A Characterization

Abstract

In this paper, we study a syntactic construction that has received little attention in the study of Spanish grammar (La masa de pizza congela perfectamente, ‘Pizza dough freezes perfectly’). It is characterized by the presence of a verb in a non-pronominal intransitive variant, with property interpretation. This construction is related to mediopassive sentences or generic middles (Las camisas de algodón se lavan fácilmente, ‘Cotton shirts wash easily’), as well as to the anticausative construction (La camisa se secó al sol, ‘The shirt dried in the sun’), a relationship that has not always been highlighted in previous studies, which are usually based on a short list of verbs. Taking as a point of departure both the verbal classification found in ADESSE and data from Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects, the construction under study is described, paying special attention to the types of verbs found in it in order to check if they coincide with the verbs found in mediopassive sentences or the anticausative construction. In addition, our study provides new data on the linguistic factors (presence of a manner adverb or other modifiers, negation), as well as on the extralinguistic factors (type of text, geographical distribution) involved in this phenomenon.

1. Introduction

In this paper, we study a syntactic construction that has received little attention in the study of Spanish grammar (La masa de pizza congela perfectamente, ‘Pizza dough freezes perfectly’). It is characterized by the presence of a verb in a non-pronominal intransitive variant, with property interpretation (Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez 2004; RAE and ASALE 2009).

This construction, which we will call NPPC (non-pronominal property construction) for the sake of brevity, is related to mediopassive sentences or generic middles1 (Las ca-misas de algodón se lavan fácilmente, ‘Cotton shirts wash easily’) in several ways: they are usually generic statements, in which a property of the subject is predicated; the preferred word order involves a preverbal subject; the verb usually appears in an imperfective tense; and the presence of a manner adverb is frequent (Martín Zorraquino 1979; Mendikoetxea 1999b; García Negroni 2002; Sánchez López 2002; Fábregas 2021, among others; see Lekakou 2005 for a crosslinguistic semantic study).

In addition, NPPC is related to the anticausative construction (La camisa se secó al sol, ‘The shirt dried in the sun’) (Haspelmath 1993; Schäfer 2008 for a general point of view; Mendikoetxea 1999a; Kailuweit 2013; Vivanco 2016, 2017; Fábregas 2021; De Benito Moreno 2022a, 2022b for the Spanish case, among many other works). On one hand, a transitive verb appears in an intransitive variant. On the other hand, some of the verbs involved in the anticausative construction can optionally appear without the clitic se (La puerta abrió, ‘The door opened’). According to De Benito Moreno (2022a, 2022b), in the anticausative construction, the presence or absence of this marker depends on different factors, both linguistic (animacy of the subject, presence of a non-reflexive dative, negation, among others) and extralinguistic (dialectal variety, type of text) in nature.

However, it is not frequent to find studies in which a connection is established among these three constructions2. It is not even frequent to find studies focused only on the NPPC construction. In this sense, we can mention the paper by Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez (2004), in which the authors briefly describe NPPC and review the lexicographical treatment that some of the verbs involved in it have received in Spanish dictionaries.

Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez (2004) base their description on a few examples coming from dictionaries, as well as CREA (Real Academia Española n.d.a), related to a list of just 15 verbs3. They also use built examples like the following sentences: Las camisas de algodón planchan bien, ‘cotton shirts iron well’; Esta puerta no cierra, ‘This door does not close’; and Los garbanzos congelan bien, ‘Chickpeas freeze well’. Taking these data as a starting point, they mention some characteristics of the NNPC: the absence of clitic se; the preverbal position of the subject; and the stative interpretation of the sentence, favored by elements that induce a generic reading (negation or manner modifiers, imperfective verbal aspect).

As for the type of verbs, they consider that the verbs that appear in NPPC are lexically restricted: they seem to be transitive verbs with an agentive argument (lavar ‘to wash’, planchar ‘to iron’) or cause (cerrar ‘to close’, congelar ‘to freeze’) and a physically affected internal argument. However, Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez (2004) consider that not all verbs that respond to this characterization give rise to NPPC. In this sense, they mention the case of causative verbs like romper, ‘to break’, as well as agentive verbs like pintar, ‘to paint’, which they believe do not have the possibility of appearing in NPPC. They consider that NPPC is restricted to a few verbs belonging to different lexical classes. In addition, they highlight the fact that the use of NPPC is not homogeneous among speakers, but seems to be more frequent in certain contexts like the vocabulary related to domestic activities (cocer, ‘to cook’; congelar, ‘to freeze’; lavar, ‘to wash’; planchar ‘to iron’, etc.). For this reason, they decide to treat verbs that appear in NPPC as cases of lexical polysemy, given that their main interest is to analyze how these verbs are treated in Spanish dictionaries. Related to this issue, they show that NPPC is codified for some verbs but not for others and that the codification is not consistent, even across the same dictionary.

From our point of view, it is necessary to deepen the characterization of Spanish NPPC, especially in relation to the types of verbs that can appear in it. Since NPPC is related both to mediopassive sentences (generic middles) and the anticausative construction, as has been previously shown, the main question that must be answered is whether verbs found in NPPC coincide with verbs found in mediopassive sentences, verbs found in the anticausative construction, or both. In order to do so, the data set of NPPC examples must be expanded in relation to previous studies (mainly Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez 2004).

In what follows, we briefly review the characterization of Spanish verbs appearing in mediopassive sentences and the anticausative construction (Section 2). Then, we present the methodology followed in this paper in order to collect examples of NPPC (Section 3). In Section 4, the construction is described, and the verbs found in it are characterized. Finally, the main conclusions are presented in Section 5.

2. Verbs Involved in Mediopassive Sentences and the Anticausative Construction: A Brief Review

There is a tendency in the literature to treat mediopassive sentences and the anticausative construction in Spanish independently. For example, Mendikoetxea (1999b) considers mediopassive sentences (Estas camisas se lavan fácilmente, ‘These shirts wash easily’) as a subclass of se-passives (pasiva refleja in Hispanic grammatical tradition, Se lavaron las camisas en la lavadora, ‘The shirts were washed in the washing machine’), whereas the anticausative construction (inchoative construction in her terminology4) receives independent treatment together with inaccusative verbs (Mendikoetxea 1999a).

This author mentions that there are verbs, like quemar, ‘to burn’, that can appear in the three constructions: se-passive (Se quemaron los bosques para acabar con la plaga, ‘The forests were burned to end the plague’), mediopassive (En verano los bosques se queman fácilmente, ‘In summer the forests burn easily’), and anticausative construction (El bosque se quemó, ‘The forest burned’) (Mendikoetxea 1999b, pp. 1654–55). However, she also points out the fact that many verbs can appear both in se-passive sentences and mediopassive sentences but not in the anticausative construction. This is the case for accomplishment verbs with an agent like construir, ‘to build’; comprar, ‘to buy’; vender, ‘to sell’; lavar, ‘to wash’; pintar, ‘to paint’; leer, ‘to read’; limpiar, ‘to clean’; and comer, ‘to eat’ (cf. Mendikoetxea 1999b, p. 1655).

As for the anticausative construction (La camisa se secó al sol, ‘The shirt dried in the sun’), it has been pointed out that verbs involved in this construction are change of state verbs (Vivanco 2016), although “not all verbs that allow the semantic and syntactic alternation between causative and anticausative take SE in Spanish. From this perspective, anticausative SE is lexically conditioned” (Fábregas 2021, p. 44). For Haspelmath (1993), verbs that give rise to the anticausative construction express changes of state that can be conceptualized as spontaneous, whereas Vivanco (2016) proposes that verbs that take part in the anticausative se-construction have a scalar dimension.

Following Schäfer (2008), whose work is, in turn, based on Haspelmath’s (1993) typology, Vivanco (2016) distinguishes three verb classes in terms of their marking pattern:

• Class A: Verbs that take part in the anticausative se-construction, such as El sol secó la ropa, ‘The sun dried the clothes’, and La ropa se secó al sol, ‘Clothes dried in the sun’. It is by far the largest class in Spanish.
• Class B: Verbs that take part in the labile alternation (non-directional alternation in which the same verb is used both in the inchoative and the causative sense without any formal mark). Examples include El gobierno aumentó los precios, ‘The government increased the prices’, and Los precios aumentaron, ‘Prices increased’. According to Vivanco (2016), Class B includes only about twenty verbs in Spanish (such as adelgazar, ‘to lose weight’; aumentar, ‘to increase’; blanquear, ‘to whiten’; cambiar, ‘to change’; disminuir, ‘to decrease’; empeorar, ‘to worsen’; encanecer, ‘to gray’; engordar, ‘to get fat’; enfermar, ‘to get sick’; enloquecer, ‘to go crazy’; enmudecer, ‘to fall silent’; envejecer, ‘to get old’; hervir, ‘to boil’; or resucitar ‘to resurrect’).
• Class C: Verbs that take part both in the anticausative and the labile alternation. Examples include La medicación mejoró al paciente, ‘The medication improved the patient’, and El paciente (se) mejoró, ‘The patient improved’. According to Vivanco (2016, p. 175), Class C verbs are subject to significant dialectal and even idiolectal variations. Some examples of them include the following: caramelizar, ‘to caramelize’; cicatrizar, ‘to cicatrize’; cristalizar, ‘to crystallize’; cuajar, ‘to curdle’; despertar, ‘to wake up’; encoger, ‘to shrink’; enmohecer, ‘to meldew’; ennegrecer, ‘to blacken’; enrojecer, ‘to redden’; mejorar, ‘to improve’; and reventar, ‘to burst’.

However, the classification of Spanish verbs in these three classes is far from straightforward, as De Benito Moreno (2022b) shows. Taking data from COSER (Fernández-Ordóñez 2005) as a point of departure, De Benito Moreno (2022b) adopts a corpus-based quantitative approach to the study of the anticausative alternation in Spanish, and she applies a generalized linear mixed model. According to De Benito Moreno (2022b), whose study is restricted to European Spanish, verbs that behave like Class C verbs are much more numerous than assumed in the literature. She shows that the presence or absence of se depends on different factors, both linguistic and extralinguistic in nature. Among the linguistic factors that favor the presence of se, the most important one is the frequency with which a verb is used in transitive structures. That is to say, verbs that appear more frequently in transitive contexts more clearly require the presence of se in the intransitive variant, as was already pointed out by Vivanco (2016) for a smaller number of verbs. Another linguistic factor is related to the animacity of the subject: animate subjects favor the presence of se (Las patatas (se) cuecen, ‘Potatoes cook’ vs. La bañista *(se) coció al sol, ‘The bather burned in the sun’). Finally, the presence of a non-reflexive dative is also relevant, which favors the appearance of se (Las patatas (se) cuecen, ‘Potatoes cook’; Al cocinero no #(se) le cocieron las patatas, ‘Lit. The cook’s potatoes did not cook’, apud. De Benito Moreno 2022a, p. 195).

As for the extralinguistic factors, De Benito Moreno (2022b) shows that the geographical variety strongly affects the presence of se. In fact, it is the second factor in general terms, just behind the frequency with which a verb is used in transitive structures. The author confirms that northwestern varieties of European Spanish disfavor the presence of se, unlike what happens in the rest of the country’s territory.

On the other hand, in some studies, a relationship is stablished between verbs that appear in mediopassive constructions and those that appear in the anticausative construction. An example comes from the NGLE (RAE and ASALE 2009, § 41.14g), where it is stated that “some pronominal verbs admit variants that are not pronominal in contexts similar to those that allow the formation of mediopassive constructions”. The NGLE mentions the case of an intransitive non-pronominal secar, cocer and cerrar, in alternation with secarse, ‘to dry’; cocerse, ‘to cook’; and cerrarse, ‘to close’, but only in imperfective tenses and constructions in which the characteristics of an entity are described, like Esta puerta no (se) cierra bien, ‘This door does not close properly’.

The same observation is made by De Benito Moreno (2022a, pp. 195–96). Among the structures that favor the absence of se in the anticausative alternation, she mentions the combination of an imperfective tense with a negation, such as La puerta no (se) abre, ‘The door does not open’; El ordenador no (se) enciende, ‘The computer does not turn on’; and Mi teléfono no (se) carga, ‘My phone does not charge’. She also points out extralinguistic factors, like the type of text or the style. Specifically, she mentions the case of cooking recipes, a kind of text in which anticausative verbs that tend to appear with se are found without this marker, typically in imperfective tenses (Volcamos la mesa sobre una bandeja que no sea muy profunda para que enfríe bien rápido, ‘We overturn the table on a tray that is not very deep so that it cools very quickly’; CORPES XXI, apud. De Benito Moreno 2022a, p. 196). This kind of extralinguistic factor regarding the type of text is not usually taken into account in the description of the anticausative alternation in Spanish.

For his part, Fábregas (2021) points out that mediopassive sentences (middle passive SE constructions, in his terminology) have generally been related to se-passives, to the point that in many analyses, they “have been treated as passive SE structures where a particular operator has been added in order to make the predicate stative and merely descriptive of the internal properties of the subject” (Fábregas 2021, p. 157). However, this author shows that mediopassive sentences are superficially more closely related to the anticausative construction than to se-passive sentences. He points out some similarities between these two constructions, of which we highlight the following factors:

• In mediopassive sentences and the anticausative construction, the subject is usually preverbal, unlike in se-passive sentences. In addition, it cannot be a bare nominal.
• Whereas se-passive sentences allow adverbs oriented toward agents (Se quemaron los bosques deliberadamente, ‘Forests were burned deliberately’), mediopassive sentences and the anticausative construction reject them. A sentence like Estas camisas se lavan deliberadamente receives a passive (eventive) interpretation (‘These shirts are deliberately washed’) and not a mediopassive (stative) one. The same outcome happens with a sentence like La puerta se abrió deliberadamente, which is interpreted as se-passive (‘The door was opened deliberately’) and not as an anticausative construction (‘The door opened’).

Taking this scenario into account, in this paper, we will explore the relationships between NPPC, the anticausative and the labile alternations and mediopassive sentences. We will take as a point of departure both the verbal classification found in ADESSE and data from Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects in order to study NPPC via a descriptive (non-quantitative) approach (ADESSE n.d.; Davies 2016). Special attention will be paid to the type of verbs found in it, with the aim of checking if they coincide with the verbs found in mediopassive sentences or the anticausative construction. In addition, our study will provide new data on the linguistic factors (presence of a manner adverb or other modifiers, negation), as well as the extralinguistic factors (type of text, geographical distribution) involved in this phenomenon.

3. Materials and Methods

The first objective of this paper was to expand the data set of NPPC examples, so that the description of this construction could be based on a sufficient number of real examples. In order to do so, we took ADESSE as a point of departure, a database of verbs and verbal constructions in Spanish and their diathesis alternations. In ADESSE, verbs are grouped into different semantic classes. Attention was paid to change verbs and their subclasses (creation verbs, modification verbs and destruction verbs), since they are the type of verb involved in the causative–inchoative alternation.

ADESSE codifies three types of voice: active, passive and pronominal constructions. Among the later (CP by its acronym in Spanish), we focused on two of them:

• The type of voice that is called “CPmedia” in ADESSE (anticausative se in our terminology);
• The type of voice that is called “CPmediopasiva” in ADESSE (se-passive in our terminology), since mediopassive sentences are not treated independently from se-passives in this database.

The two following advanced searches were carried out:

• Semantic class: Change verbs and subclasses; voice: CPmedia; syntactic function: subject; and animation: unanimated. Overall, 233 verbs were obtained, with 1046 examples in total. The ten most frequent were as follows: abrir, ‘to open’ (111 examples); producir, ‘to produce’ (107); cerrar, ‘to close’ (34); desvanecer, ‘to fade’; prolongar, ‘to prolong’ (25); romper, ‘to break’ (23); apagar, ‘to turn off’ (21); encender, ‘to turn on, to light’ (19); formar, ‘to form’ (17); secar, ‘to dry’ (16); and cortar, ‘to cut’ (15).
• Semantic class: Change verbs and subclasses; voice: CPmediopasiva; syntactic function: subject; and animation: unanimated. Overall, 129 verbs were obtained, with 358 examples in total. The ten most frequent were as follows: establecer, ‘to establish’ (25 examples); crear, ‘to create’ (18); escribir, ‘to write’ (17); hacer, ‘to do’ (15); organizar, ‘to organize’ (9); registrar, ‘to register’ (9); cerrar, ‘to close’ (8); modificar, ‘to modify’ (8); construir, ‘to build’ (7); traducir, ‘to translate’; resolver, ‘to solve’; abrir, ‘to open’; formar, ‘to form’; and llenar, ‘to fill’ (6).

The verbs of these two lists were taken as the points of departure for searching examples of NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects5. We performed direct searches of these verbs in the present indicative and third person singular (cierra, for example, for the case of cerrar, ‘to close’), together with an adverb (mainly manner-related adverbs, like fácilmente, ‘easily’; bien, ‘well’; mal, ‘badly’; and rápidamente, ‘quickly’, but also quantity adverbs, like mucho, ‘much’, or poco ‘little’), together with negation (no cierra, for example). As has already been said, our aim was not to carry out a quantitative study, but a descriptive one. For this reason, these direct searches provided us with a sufficient number of examples in order to characterize NPPC in Spanish.

4. Results: Description and Characterization

4.1. Verbs Found of NPPC

The results of the searches performed in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects are presented in the appendices6. Appendix A collects 72 verbs that are found in the anticausative construction in ADESSE and have been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. Most of them belong to the modification class, the largest one among change verbs in ADESSE. Some examples of these verbs in NPPC are shown in (1)7:

(1)	a.	Y	el	encaje	con	fibra	sintética,	(CO)
		and	the	lace	with	fiber	synthetic
		así	no	arruga
		so	not	wrinkles
		‘And the lace with synthetic fiber, so it does not winkle’.
	b.	Una	rodilla	que	dobla	fácilmente	es	(MX)
		a	knee	that	bends	easily	is
		un	signo	de	humildad	y	flexibilidad
		a	sign	of	modesty	and	flexibility
		‘A knee that bends easily is a sign of modesty and flexibility’.
	c.	La	varicela	incuba	en	14	a	(AR)
		the	chickenpox	incubates	in	14	to
		21	días
		21	days
		‘Chickenpox incubates for 14 to 21 days’.

Verbs included in Appendix A are verbs that undergo a physical change in state (this is a common characteristic of verbs codified as change verbs in ADESSE). They allow a causative interpretation (enmohecer, ‘to meldew’; marchitar, ‘to wither’; and oxidar, ‘to oxidize’), and some of them also allow an agentive interpretation (abrochar, ‘to fasten’, and regar, ‘to water’). Some of the verbs considered by Vivanco (2016) as Class A verbs (that is to say, verbs that always require the presence of se in the intransitive variant) appear in Appendix A, which means that they have been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects and, therefore, are without se. This is true in the case of alargar, ‘to lengthen’; derretir, ‘to melt’; endurecer, ‘to harden’; fundir, ‘to melt’; pudrir, ‘to rot’; and solidificar, ‘to solidify’. This fact supports the claim made by De Benito Moreno (2022a, 2022b) about the difficulty of ascribing Spanish verbs to the three classes (A, B, C) distinguished in the literature. It also supports the idea that the absence of se is favored by linguistic factors like the imperfective aspect, negation and manner adverbs, which characterize NPPC, as the examples in (2) show:

(2)	a.	Me	gusta	el	Gouda	porque	derrite	(DO)
		Me	like	the	Gouda	because	melts
		bien
		well
		‘I like Gouda because it melts well’.
	b.	Ya	que	el	material	no	endurece	(CO)
		Already	that	the	material	not	hardens
		si	no	es	horneado
		if	not	is	baked
		‘Since the material does not harden if it is not baked’.
	c.	Es	muy	rico	en	pectina,	por	(GT)
		Is	very	rich	in	pectin	for
		lo	que	solidifica	muy	bien
		it	that	solidifies	very	well
		‘It is very rich in pectin, so it solidifies very well’.

In Appendix B, we present 28 verbs that are found in the se-passive construction in ADESSE and have been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. As said before, this database does not treat mediopassive sentences independently. For this reason, we have underlined those verbs for which examples of mediopassive construction are found in ADESSE. As can be seen in Appendix B, there are very few such verbs, which means that mediopassive sentences are less frequently attested in this database than se-passive sentences, something that probably reflects the general situation in Spanish8. Some examples in which verbs from Appendix B appear in NPPC are shown in (3)9:

(3)	a.	Cuando	su	producción	es	insuficiente	el	(ES)
		When	its	production	is	insufficient	the
		embrión	no	implanta
		embryo	not	implant
		‘When its production is insufficient the embryo does not implant’.
	b.	Y	el	gordito	no	retrata	bien	(PR)
		And	the	chubby	not	portray	well
		‘And the chubby one does not portray well’.
	c.	Recomendamos	paciencia	y	esperar	un	par	(PE)
		Recommend	patience	and	wait	a	pair
		de	días	a	ver	si	regulariza
		of	days	to	see	if	regularizes
		‘We recommend patience and to wait a couple of days to see if it regularizes’.

One of the verbs in Appendix B is included in class A by Vivanco (2016), namely encarecer, ‘to raise the price of, to become more expensive’. However, it is attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects, as the example (4a) shows. In Appendix B, there are also some verbs included in class B by Vivanco (2016), that is to say, verbs which take part in the labile alternation but not in the se-anticausative construction. They are aumentar, ‘to increase’; blanquear, ‘to whiten’; cambiar, ‘to change’; and engrosar, ‘to thicken’. Two of them (cambiar and engrosar) are attested in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects in NPPC and in ADESSE in mediopassive construction. Examples of NPPC are shown in (4b) and (4c):

(4)	a.	[…] me	encuentro	que	tengo	que	comprar	(ES)
		me	find	that	have	that	by
		papel	que	encarece	poco	a	poco
		paper	that	becomes more expensive	little	to	little
		‘I find that I have to buy paper that becomes more expensive little by little’.
	b.	La	pantalla	cambia	fácilmente	de	posición	(CO)
		The	screen	changes	easily	of	position
		‘The screen easily changes position’.
	c.	[…] para	ver	que	ese	endometrio	no	(PE)
		to	see	that	that	endometrium	not
		engrosa	demasiado
		thickens	too much
		‘[…] to see that that endometrium does not thicken too much’.

Some of the verbs included in Appendix B are clearly agentive (inventar, ‘to invent, to make up’; lavar ‘to wash’; and retratar ‘to portray’). Other verbs allow a causative reading (aumentar, ‘to increase’; blanquear ‘to whiten’; and destruir, ‘to destroy’). As for the kind of object, most of the verbs in Appendix B have a physically affected object (blanquear, ‘to whiten’; lavar, ‘to wash’; and modificar, ‘to modify’), whereas some of them have an effected or result object, that is to say, they are creation verbs (inventar, ‘to invent’; ‘to make up’; and producir, ‘to produce’). As for the case of retratar, ‘to portray’, the meaning of this verb implies the creation of a representation of a pre-existing object.

In Appendix C, we present 21 verbs that are found both in the anticausative construction and the se-passive construction in ADESSE and have been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. As in Appendix B, those verbs for which examples of mediopassive construction are found in ADESSE are underlined. Some examples in which verbs from Appendix C appear in NPPC are shown in (5):

(5)	a.	[…] fija	bien	en	El	párpado	superior	(CL)
		sets	well	on	The	eyelid	upper
		y	es	barato
		and	is	cheap
		‘[…] it sets well on the upper eyelid and it is cheap’.
	b.	Disuelve	fácilmente	en	carbono			(CO)
		dissolves	easily	in	Carbon
		‘It easily dissolves in carbon’.
	c.	El	tanque	llena	Bien			(ES)
		the	tank	fills	Well
		‘The tank fills well’.

Some of the verbs included in Appendix C are frequently mentioned in studies of the anticausative alternation and studies of mediopassives (abrir, ‘to open’; cerrar, ‘to close’; and secar, ‘to dry’). Examples of these verbs in NPPC are presented in (6):

(6)	a.	Estrechamiento	de	una	válvula	cardiaca	al	(ES)
		narrowing	of	a	valve	cardiac	to the
		abrirse	(no	abre	bien)
		open	not	opens	well
		‘Narrowing of a cardiac valve when opening (it does not open well)’.
	b.	[…] y	la	tapa	cierra	bien		(CL)
		and	the	lid	closes	well
		‘And the lid closes well’.
	c.	El	problema	es	que	en	algunas	(MX)
		The	problem	is	that	on	some
		superficies	no	seca
		surfaces	not	dries
		‘The problem is that on some surfaces it does not dry’.

Other verbs, like romper, ‘to break’, frequently mentioned in studies of the anticausative alternation, have been claimed not to give rise to NPPC (Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez 2004). However, this ability has been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects, as shown in (7):

(7)	La	piel	Del	Quetzal	es	muy	(VE)
	The	skin	of the	quetzal	is	very
	delgada	y	rompe	fácilmente
	thin	and	breaks	easily
	‘The quetzal’s skin is very thin and breaks easily’.

As in the case of Appendix A, some of the verbs considered by Vivanco (2016) as Class A verbs (that is to say, verbs that always require the presence of se in the intransitive variant) appear in Appendix C, which means that they have been attested in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects, and, therefore, are without se. This is the case of abrir, ‘to open’; apagar, ‘to turn off’; calentar, ‘to heat, to get hot’; cerrar, ‘to close’; and encender, ‘to turn on, to light’. We offer some examples in (8):

(8)	a.	El	calentador	no	apaga	y	continúa	(CR)
		the	heater	not	turns off	and	continues
		gastando	electricidad
		wasting	electricity
		‘The heater does not turn off and it continues wasting electricity’.
	b.	Yo	uso	un	Acer	Aspire	con	(ES)
		I	use	an	Acer	Aspire	with
		las	precauciones	que	dice	el	manual
		the	precautions	that	says	the	manual
		y	no	calienta	en	absoluto
		and	not	get hot	in	absolute
		‘I use an Acer Aspire with the precautions that the manual says and it does not get hot at all’.
	c.	El	celular	no	enciende			(CO)
		The	cell phone	not	turns on
		‘The cell phone does not turn on’.

Most verbs in Appendix C are causative verbs with a physically affected object (abrir, ‘to open’; cerrar, ‘to close’; romper, ‘to break’; vaciar, ‘to empty’), whereas some of them have an effected or result object (creation verbs like reproducir, ‘to reproduce’, or registrar, ‘to register’).

Summing up, as can be seen in the appendices, in absolute terms, more verbs that take part in the anticausative alternation are found in NPPC than verbs that appear in se-passive construction. This can be related to the fact that we have taken data from ADESSE as a point of departure, and the total number of verbs attested in the anticausative construction (1304) in ADESSE is greater than the total number of verbs attested in the se-passive construction (711). But, there is also a difference in relative terms: 72 of the 233 verbs (30.90%) that take part in the anticausative alternation have been found in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects, whereas the proportion is lower in the case of verbs that appear in the se-passive construction (28 of 129 verbs, 21.70%).

4.2. Presence of a Modifier

As said before, NPPC coincides with mediopassive sentences in the frequent presence of a modifier expressing manner, instrument or meaning, although this kind of modifier may be absent. As for mediopassive sentences, Fábregas (2021, pp. 163–64) distinguishes three interpretations, associated with the presence or absence of a modifier:

• The necessity reading, which emerges typically without modifiers and involves an agent. Example: Estas camisas se planchan, ‘One must iron this type of shirt’.
• The facilitation reading, which also involves an agent. The subject is interpreted as “having internal properties that facilitate or make the event more difficult in combination with the means or instruments expressed by the modifier” (Fábregas 2021, p. 164). This reading is favored by the presence of a manner adverb. Example: Estas camisas se lavan bien con agua fría, ‘These shirts wash well with cold water’.
• The tendency or propensity reading, which does not involve an agent. The modifier may be absent. The subject has a propensity to participate in the event because of its internal properties. Example: Este material se rompe (fácilmente) cuando hace calor, ‘This material breaks (easily) when it is hot’.

Fábregas (2021) relates the propensity reading to verbs that allow the anticausative construction (abrir, ‘to open’; romper, ‘to break’) and the necessity and the facilitation readings to agentive verbs that do not give rise to the anticausative construction (lavar, ‘to wash’; planchar, ‘to iron’). He considers that mediopassive sentences are anticausative structures with an operator that triggers the non-episodic reading of the event and the kind interpretation of the internal argument. He explains the association between readings and type of verbs in the following way: “There is no agent projected in the structure: verbs that lexically involve an agent and do not allow the anticausative reading require, because of that, a modifier that licenses the agent interpretation that is required by the predicate but is missing from the syntactic structure: the necessity or the facilitation reading emerges. Predicates that allow the anticausative reading without qualification give rise to the propensity reading in combination with the operator” (Fábregas 2021, p. 164).

As for NPPC, the presence of a manner modifier is frequent, as the examples in (9) show:

(9)	a.	Disuelve	fácilmente	en	carbono			(CO)
		dissolves	easily	in	carbon
		‘It easily dissolves in carbon’.
	b.	Hay	que	recordar	que	el	blanco	(ES)
		There is	that	remember	that	the	white
		de	los	ojos	fosiliza	mal
		of	the	eyes
		‘We must remember that the whites of the eyes fossilizes poorly’.
	c.	Se	trata	de	un	grano	pequeño	(ES)
		SE	is about	of	a	grain	small
		y	por	lo	tanto	cuece	rápido
		and	for	it	such	cooks	quickly
		‘It is a small grain and therefore cooks quickly’.

However, the modifier is absent in some cases, as shown in (10):

(10)	a.	No	dejemos	que	el	almíbar	se	(PE)
		Not	let	that	the	syrup	SE
		pase	de	punto	o	de	color
		go	of	point	or	of	color
		demasiado	oscuro	porque	si	no	amarga
		too	dark	because	if	not	bitters
		‘Do not let the syrup overcook or go too dark in color because otherwise it bitters’.
	b.	Recomendamos	paciencia	y	esperar	un	par	(PE)
		Recommend	patience	and	wait	a	pair
		de	días	a	ver	si	regulariza
		of	days	to	see	if	regularizes
		‘We recommend patience and to wait a couple of days to see if it regularizes’.

If mediopassives sentences and NPPC were similar constructions, in the case of agentive verbs like lavar, ‘to wash’, or retratar, ‘to portray’, we would expect the necessity reading or the facilitative reading when they appear in NPPC, following Fábregas (2021). However, these verbs receive a propensity reading, as the examples in (11) show:

(11)	a.	La	funda	se	la	puedes	quitar	(ES)
		The	cover	SE	it	can	remove
		y	lavarla	en	la	lavadora.	Lava
		and	wash it	in	the	washing machine	washes
		bien
		well
		‘The cover can be removed and washed in the washing machine. It washes well’.
	b.	Y	el	gordito	no	retrata	bien	(PR)
		And	the	chubby	not	portray	well
		‘And the chubby one does not portray well’.

Another agentive verb like planchar, ‘to iron’, which is not included in the appendices because it has not been found in ADESSE either in the anticausative construction nor in the se-passive construction, also receives a propensity reading when it appears in NPCC, as can be seen in the example in (12):

(12)	Esta	camisa	plancha	muy	bien		(ES)
	This	shirt	irons	very	well
	‘This shirt irons very well’.

From our point of view, the examples in (11) and (12) show that NPPC and mediopassive sentences differ in their interpretation. As suggested by Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez (2004), while there is an implicit agent in the interpretation of mediopassive sentences, it is absent in NPPC. This explains why the only reading we identify with NPPC is the propensity reading, while the interpretations that involve an agent (the necessity reading and the facilitative reading) are discarded. In this sense, NPPC is closer to the anticausative construction than to mediopassive sentences.

As pointed out by De Benito Moreno (2022a, pp. 195–96) in relation to the anticausative construction, negation also favors the absence of marker se. Since negation is an element that induces a generic reading (Mendikoetxea 1999b), its presence is expected to be frequent in NPPC, as shown in (13):

(13)	a.	El	Paneer	es	un	tipo	de	(EC)
		The	Paneer	is	a	kind	of
		queso	sin	madurar,	que	no	derrite
		cheese	without	ripen	that	not	melts
		‘The Paneer is a kind of unripened cheese, that does not melt’.
	b.	La	sangre	obtenida	no	coagula		(MX)
		The	blood	obtained	not	coagulates
		‘The obtained blood does not coagulate’.
	c.	Cocción	de	agua	y	azúcar	que	(CO)
		Cooking	of	water	and	sugar	that
		al	enfriarse	a	la	temperatura	ambiente
		to	cool	to	the	temperature	environment
		no	solidifica
		not	solidifies
		‘Cooking of water and sugar that does not solidify when cooled to room temperature’.

4.3. Extralinguistic Factors

4.3.1. Type of Text

It is not usual in grammatical studies focused on the anticausative construction or mediopassive sentences to pay attention to the type of text in which these constructions appear. De Benito Moreno’s (2022a) divulgative paper on the presence and absence of se in Spanish can be considered an exception. Indeed, she mentions the case of cooking recipes, a kind of text in which verbs that tend to appear in the se-anticausative alternation are often found without this marker, typically in imperfective tenses (Volcamos la mesa sobre una bandeja que no sea muy profunda para que enfríe bien rápido, ‘We overturn the table on a tray that is not very deep so that it cools very quickly’, CORPES XXI, apud. De Benito Moreno 2022a, p. 196).

Our data support De Benito Moreno’s (2022a) observation. Many of the examples of NPPC found in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects come from cooking recipes, which are instructive texts that may include descriptive content. We offer some examples in (14):

(14)	a.	Este	queso	se	unta	fácilmente	y	(HN)
		This	cheese	SE	spreads	easily	and
		también	funde	bien
		also	melts	well
		‘This cheese spreads easily and also melts well’.
	b.	La	masa	no	levanta	en	el	(AR)
		The	dough	not	rise	in	the
		horno
		oven
		‘The dough does not rise in the oven’.
	c.	Si	veis	que	no	oscurece	mucho,	(ES)
		If	see	that	not	get dark	a lot
		echad	un	poco	más	de	tinta
		add	a	little	more	of	ink
		‘If you see that it does not get very dark, add a little more ink’.

Together with cooking recipes, NPPC examples are also frequently found in scientific texts with a descriptive character, as shown in (15):

(15)	a.	La	varicela	incuba	en	14	a	(AR)
		the	chickenpox	incubates	in	14	to
		21	días
		21	days
		‘Chickenpox incubates in 14 to 21 days’.
	b.	El	agua	no	condensa	por	sobresaturación	(ES)
		The	water	not	condenses	due to	oversaturation
		‘Water does not condense due to oversaturation’.
	c.	Es	importante	señalar	que	la	PMC	(BO)
		Is	important	note	that	the	CPM
		no	cura	totalmente
		not	cure	completely
		‘It is important to note that CPM does not completely cure’.

Finally, NPPC examples also appear in other descriptive texts like those in which a certain product is recommended, as the examples in (16) show:

(16)	a.	El	envase	me	gusta,	lindo	color	(CL)
		The	container	me	like	nice	color
		y	la	tapa	cierra	bien
		and	the	lid	closes	well
		‘I like the container, nice color and the lid closes well’.
	b.	Seca	bien	rápido	y	la	fórmula	(CL)
		Dries	very	fast	and	the	formula
		corre	rápido,	el	pincel	es	algo
		runs	fast	the	brush	is	a bit
		grande	[…]
		big
		‘It dries very fast and the formula runs fast, the brush is a bit big […]’.

Summing up, as the examples above show, verbs in NPPC are used in texts that are mainly descriptive (scientific descriptions, recommendations), as well as in other types of texts that include descriptions (such as cooking recipes, which are mainly instructive) in order to express properties that characterize an entity or a kind of entities.

4.3.2. Geographical Origin of the Examples

In our searches, we have found examples of NPPC coming from all Spanish-speaking countries. However, as explained in Section 3, we have performed direct searches of a selection of verbs taken from ADESSE in order to obtain a sufficient sample of examples of NPPC. This methodology has not provided us with all existing examples of NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. For this reason, we cannot draw general conclusions on the geographical distribution of NPPC. Added to this is the fact that there may be lexical differences between verbs. For example, we have searched for all the examples in which two very similar verbs, derretir and fundir, both meaning ‘to melt’, appear in present indicative, third person singular (derrite and funde), and the results have been very different. While we have found just 6 examples of derrite in NPPC, in the case of funde, we have found 99 examples. Unlike fundir, derretir is not frequently used in scientific texts. This can explain in part the difference in the number of examples found for each of these two verbs.

Due to this kind of lexical differences, it would be necessary to carry out a study of the geographical variation in each verb, something that exceeds the limits of our work. For our part, we will focus on one particular case, namely fundir, ‘to melt’, included in Appendix A. As said above, we have found 99 examples of NPPC with funde (present indicative, third person singular). In 80 of these examples, fundir is used in the first meaning coded in DLE (‘Melt and liquefy metals, minerals or other solid bodies’) (see example in 17a), the only one for which this dictionary mentions the possibility of a non-pronominal intransitive use10. However, we have also found four examples of the fourth meaning (‘Reduce two or more different things to one’) (17b) and 15 examples of the sixth meaning related to cinema and television (‘Mix the last moments of an image or sound with the first moments of another sequence’) (17c). Therefore, although DLE only mentions the possibility of a non-pronominal intransitive use in the case of the first meaning, this use of fundir is also documented in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects for other meanings of the verb:

(17)	a.	El	plomo	funde	A	328 C		(ES)
		The	lead	melts	To	328 C
		‘Lead melts at 328 C’.
	b.	[…] funde	rápido	con	La	piel		(ES)
		melts	qickly	with	The	skin
		‘It melts quickly with the skin’.
	c.	Tras	esos	créditos,	La	pantalla	funde	(AR)
		After	those	credits	The	screen	melts
		A	negro
		to	black
		‘After those credits, the screen fades to black’.

In

Table 1. Geographical origin of the examples of funde in NPPC.

Country	Cases	Percentage
Spain	48	48.48%
Mexico	13	13.13%
Argentina	12	12.12%
Colombia	7	7.07%
Panama	5	5.05%
US	3	3.03%
Bolivia	2	2.02%
Chile	2	2.02%
Ecuador	1	1.01%
Guatemala	1	1.01%
Honduras	1	1.01%
Nicaragua	1	1.01%
El Salvador	1	1.01%
Uruguay	1	1.01%
Venezuela	1	1.01%
Total	99	100%

, we show the geographical origin of the examples of funde in NPPC found in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. As can be seen, we have found examples coming from 15 countries that belong to different Spanish linguistic areas. The use of fundir in a non-pronominal intransitive variant with property interpretation seems to be quite general in the Spanish-speaking world. The largest number of cases come from Spain (48%), followed by Mexico (13.13%) and Argentina (12.12%).

Table 1 illustrates the situation in relation to the use of funde in NPPC in Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects. However, it would be necessary to investigate the geographical distribution of NPPC for each of the verbs documented in the construction in order to check if there are significant differences between them, a task that exceeds the aim of this work and that we leave for future research.

5. Conclusions

In this paper, we have characterized a type of construction that we have named NPPC, in which a verb appears in a non-pronominal intransitive variant with property interpretation (La masa de pizza congela perfectamente, ‘Pizza dough freezes perfectly’). We have taken as a point of departure the verbal classification found in ADESSE and data from Corpus del Español: Web/Dialects in order to increase the sample of verbs included in the few previous studies.

Although NPPC seems to be related both to the anticausative construction and mediopassive sentences, which some authors consider a type of se-passive, we have shown that more verbs that take part in the anticausative alternation are found in NPPC than verbs that appear in the se-passive construction, both in absolute and relative terms. As expected, causative verbs with an affected object predominate, although some verbs that allow an agentive reading also appear in NPPC (lavar, ‘to wash’, and retratar, ‘to portray’). We have shown that some verbs that have been included among Class A verbs in previous studies of the anticausative construction (Vivanco 2016), that is to say, among verbs that always require clitic se when used intransitively, appear in NPPC, and, therefore, are without clitic se. This is true in the cases of alargar, ‘to lengthen’; derretir, ‘to melt’; endurecer, ‘to harden’; fundir, ‘to melt’; pudrir ‘to rot’; and solidificar, ‘to solidify’ (Appendix A), as well as those of abrir, ‘to open’; apagar, ‘to turn off’; calentar ‘to heat, to get hot’; cerrar, ‘to close’; and encender, ‘to turn on, to light’ (Appendix C). Therefore, more verbs than those usually mentioned in the literature take part both in the anticausative alternation and the labile alternation (class C). This fact supports De Benito Moreno’s (2022b) claim that the classification of Spanish verbs in three classes in terms of their marking pattern is far from straightforward. It seems that verbs considered to belong to Class A can easily appear without clitic se in some contexts, like generic statements or stative predications like those involved in NPPC.

From our point of view, NPPC can be considered a construction in which a usually eventive predicate turns into a predicate that expresses a property of the subject. Unlike mediopassive sentences, no implicit agent is interpreted. This is the reason why, in NPPC, we only identify the propensity reading (in terms of Fábregas 2021), whereas the necessity reading and the facilitative reading are discarded. Since NPPC expresses a property of the subject, it is frequently used in descriptive texts (scientific descriptions, recommendations), as well as in other types of texts that include descriptions (such as cooking recipes, which are mainly instructive).

As for the geographical distribution of this construction, we have found examples coming from all Spanish-speaking countries. However, due to the limits of this study, we have focused on a single verb, namely fundir, ‘to melt’. We have shown that NPPC with funde is not associated with a particular Spanish linguistic area. The presence of this verb in NPPC is quite usual, which explains the fact that dictionaries like DLE mention its non-pronominal intransitive use as a possibility under the form of a grammatical mark at the end of the first meaning. In the case of other verbs, like cerrar, ‘to close’, this possibility is treated as a different meaning (although not for abrir, ‘to open’), whereas in the case of derretir, ‘to melt’, the non-pronominal intransitive use is not mentioned. Contrary to what we proposed in previous works (Felíu Arquiola and Torres Martínez 2004), the fact that many verbs can appear in NPPC lead us to consider that this possibility should not be coded in dictionaries as a different meaning of particular verbs, but as a grammatical mark if anything. However, before deciding the lexicographical treatment of NPPC, it is necessary to better understand its geographical distribution, since there might be lexical differences among verbs. We leave this question for future research.