The Romance Reflective Passive

Abstract

The chief features of Romance reflexive passives are: the imperfective aspect of the verb, a small number of definite subjects (which does not exceed 50%), a very high percentage of inanimate subjects (almost 100%), the absence of an agent constituent, a tendency towards V-S order. These features favour the thetic character of utterances with reflexive passives.

We can observe a tendency for periphrastic passives to be replaced by reflexive passives, especially in Spanish, that is to say, some reflexive passives tend to take features characteristic of periphrastic passives such as definite subject or perfective verb.

Four languages: Italian, Portuguese, Rumanian and Spanish belong to the central zone, French is aberrent. The weakness of the French reflexive passives is correlated with the strength of the French periphrastic passives, favoured by analytical tendency. The specificity of Rumanian consists in the fact that it is rich in periphrastic as well as in reflexive passives. Its richness in periphrastic passives can be explained by the weakness of its impersonals and probably also by French influence.