Optional se constructions and flavours of applicatives in Spanish

This paper addresses Spanish optional se constructions, which host a reflexive clitic serving as non-selected argument in transitive structures (comer(se) la manzana ‘eat.REFL the apple’). On basis of new experimental data, we argue against view that such constructions is similar to particles exhaustivity up English. We instead propose pronoun merged an low applicative, conveying locative relation ‘in(x; y; s)’ between binder x and nominative DP y (‘x s’), or, for subset speakers, high introducing (direct) experiencer verbal event. It shown how this proposal accounts variability acceptance across speakers verb types well inferences enriched or unaided agency, affectedness counter-expectation have been argued be triggered by se-variant these constructions.