Pseudorrelativas y obviación en español

Abstract

the direct object is not possible, when it is combined with a pseudorelative (e.g. que se caía, ‘that he fell’, in Ana vio a Juan que se caía , literally ‘Ana saw John that he fell’, with the meaning of ‘Ana saw that John fell’). In this paper we show that, despite its name, pseudo-relatives are not relatives but complement clauses. The impossibility of passivization, we defend, lies in a ban that physical direct perception verbs impose on their clausal complements. According to this ban, embedded subjects can only have disjoint reference with the matrix subject. This explains not only the behavior of these verbs with respect to passivization, but also the ban on reflexive and passive se .