Theta Meets Aspect: The Spanish Aspectual “Se” with Consumption Verbs.

This paper sets out to address the Spanish so-called aspectual se that appears with consumption verbs like "leer-leerse" (read) as in "Juan se leyó un libro" vs. "Juan leyó un libro". These verbs have agentive subjects, and select incremental theme objects. Previous analyses build upon the idea that se makes an aspectual contribution to the semantics of the predicate. We will argue, however, that the contribution of se in consumption predicates is thematic rather than aspectual: se is a fully functional pronoun that is interpreted as a participant of the event due to its bearing dative Case and its being theta-marked as experiencer. The presence of this thetamarked experiencer argument triggers the expansion of the predicate by adding a causally related state whose argument is the clitic. It is a lexical operation that licenses se with consumption verbs. This operation has previously been described for causativization phenomena in a variety of languages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]