Lability in Western Peninsular Spanish

Abstract

The western variety of Peninsular Spanish possesses a type of causative construction in which an intransitive lexeme is used transitively. This phenomenon, called lability, is attested in three specific verbs: caer (‘to fall’), quedar (‘to stay’) and entrar (‘to enter’). As a consequence, they can induce a direct object at the expense of the standard forms tirar (‘to throw’), dejar (‘to leave’) and meter (‘to put in’). Lability has not been studied in depth for Spanish and, with this paper, I attempt to pinpoint its current extension as well as the possible semantic factors that prompt the transitivisation of these verbs.

The western variety of Peninsular Spanish possesses a type of causative construction in which an intransitive lexeme is used transitively. This phenomenon, called lability, is attested in three specific verbs: caer (‘to fall’), quedar (‘to stay’) and entrar (‘to enter’). As a consequence, they can induce a direct object at the expense of the standard forms tirar (‘to throw’), dejar (‘to leave’) and meter (‘to put in’). Lability has not been studied in depth for Spanish and, with this paper, I attempt to pinpoint its current extension as well as the possible semantic factors that prompt the transitivisation of these verbs.