Spanish Emphatic Possessives and Reflexivity

Abstract This paper studies the interpretive properties of emphatic possessives in Spanish (e.g., El apartamento tiene su cocina y todo ‘The flat has its own kitchen and all’), focusing on a feature that distinguishes this type of possessives from canonical prenominal possessives: their reflexive status. It is first claimed that emphatic possessives are consistently used in order to confirm and reinforce a pre-existent possession relation. Certain cases that prima facie might cast doubts on the characterization of emphatic possessives as reflexives are further addressed, showing that possessives with an emphatic meaning always behave like anaphors. The role reflexivity plays in the expression of emphasis is finally discussed, arguing that emphatic possessives belong to a group of optional non-core reflexive pronouns with an emphatic import, which also includes emphatic pronouns and the aspectual dative.