On the Croatian variant of the resultative construction with fake reflexives and its English counterpart

There is a variant of the resultative construction with fake reflexives in Croatian. It is formed by combining saturative verbs with reflexive pronoun se and resultatives. The construction is based on the collocation with adjective sit ‘full’ (see 1a–b) which seems to facilitate innovative examples by analogy (see 2a–b). Our main claim is that the Croatian variant of the construction may help explain problems tied to its English counterpart. It could certainly help with Oya’s (2002) assumption that fake reflexives in German have a wider use in resultative construction because the reflexive pronoun in German functions as a weak form while the English one is being used only as a strong form and therefore cannot take place within the sphere of the subject, i.e. it cannot come with verbs that denote caring for the body (e.g. wash, shower, exercise) or body position verbs (e.g. sit, stand, lie). This is only partly correct. Verbs of internal motion like squirm, kick, crawl readily combine with fake reflexives and resultatives. The same holds for touch verbs like lick, pinch and caress. English therefore has the potential to combine fake reflexives and resultatives within the sphere of the subject. It is our position that there are three types of resultative constructions with fake reflexives: (i) the type that represents the transfer of a subject to a physical or abstract location (3a); (ii) the type that represents the change of a subject’s state caused by excessive action of the agent (3b); (iii) the type that represents the change of a subject’s state caused by saturating the experiencer with a specific sensation (3c). The form of the reflexive pronoun found in types (i) and (ii) can be equally defined as weak and strong, as is suggested by the possibility of their alternation in Croatian. However, when the experiencer is foregrounded, when the state of the experiencer subject changes through saturation with some specific sensation, reflexivity is expressed by the weak form of the pronoun and the number of possible examples in English is significantly reduced. Consequently, we conclude that the reflexive pronoun’s weak form occurs in correlation with the topicalization of the experiencer. We will elaborate our position by relying on the theoretical framework of construction grammar proposed by Goldberg (1995, 1999). The major portion of the language material for the analysis will come from the Croatian web corpus (hrWaC) and the British National Corpus (BNC).

1.  a.   Na      kraj-u           se              sit                     na-pi-je-m                         jeftin-og          vin-a.  

                    at        end-LOC    REFL        full-NOM        CAUS-drink-PRS-1SG      cheap-GEN     wine-GEN

                    ‘At the end I drink myself full of cheap wine.’

            b.  Povremeno          se           siti                   na-smi-j-u.               

                  occasionally      REFL      full-NOM        CAUS-laugh-PRS-3PL

                  'Occasionally they laugh themselves full [/to their heart's content].' 

2. a. Na-spav-a-o                           se                  trijezan.     

                 CAUS-sleep-PTCP-1SG     REFL              sober-NOM

                 'He has slept himself sober.'

              b. Onda       se          na-pij-ø-u                            lude.               

                  then        REFL     CAUS-drink-PRS-3PL       crazy-NOM

                  'Then they drink themselves mad.'

3. a. [He] has snaked himself into the hearts of our fair admirers. (Peña-Cervel 2016)

   b. He has crawled himself into exhaustion. (Peña-Cervel 2016)

   c. Ja     se        ne      mog-u                    sita              na-čudi-ti                   negativnoj          slici.

        I      REFL    not     can-PRS-1SG      full-NOM     CAUS-marvel-INF   negative-DAT    image-DAT

       'I cannot marvel myself full at the negative image.' 

      (I cannot overindulge myself in marvel at the negative image.)