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quedar and quedarse: A Study of Contrastive Ranges

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2026

William E. Bull and
With the Collaboration of Alfredo Cantón and Consuelo Uribe De Wise
William E. Bull
Affiliation:
University of California at Los Angeles
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Extract

Quedar and quedarse form one of the pairs of a fairly large number of common intransitive verbs (caer, morir, ir, reír, venir, estar, parecer, salir, etc.) the uses of whose pseudo-reflexive and non-reflexive forms have traditionally been catalogued in that limbo category of constructions which can only be explained by the Sprachgefühl of the native. Information on the uses of these forms is, consequently, exceedingly scant. The Diccionario de la lengua espanola notes the presence of some of the most troublesome aspects of the problem only with its uncritical and ubiquitous ‘Úsase también como reflexivo.’ The one indexed reference to quedar in the Academy grammar is concerned with an unqualified, one-sentence statement indicating that quedar, like dejar, llevar, and estar, may be used as an auxiliary to form a compound with a past participle. Andrés Bello recognizes the problem but confines his explanation to the assertion that in the use of the reflexive form of intransitive verbs ‘percibiremos cierto color de acción que el sujeto parece ejercer en sí mismo.’ Bello also maintains that ‘estarse es permanecer voluntariamente en cierta situación o estaoo’ and that ‘la misma diferencia aparece entre quedar y quedarse, ir e irse.' On the American scene, M. M. Ramsey categorically states that quedar ‘may be used optionally with or without the reflexive., Hayward Keniston is more cautious. He includes quedar in the general group of intransitives sometimes used reflexively and affirms that ‘the use of the reflexive pronoun’ with intransitive verbs ‘is strongly affective in character and indicates that the speaker has some special interest in relating the action or state to the subject of the sentence.‘

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Language , Volume 26 , Issue 4-Part1: October-December , December 1950, pp. 467 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © 1950 by the Linguistic Society of America

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References

1 The major portion of the research for this study was done at Washington University, St. Louis. It was in part made possible by grants from that university and from the American Council of Learned Societies.

2 Madrid, 1939.

3 Gramática de la lengua española 50 (Madrid, 1931).

4 Gramática de la lengua española 201 (Buenos Aires, 1941). Bellow's implication that irse indicates voluntary departure can hardly be accepted as accurate. Whether the subject is forced to leave or leaves willingly cannot be fixed in this fashion. Irse is used for departure regardless of the circumstances promoting it. When the destination is specifically stated, the most common form is ir; when the destination is not specified, irse is required. The distinction is semantic (to leave, to go to), a problem which will be discussed in a future paper.

5 A text-book of modern Spanish 287 (New York, 1933).

6 Spanish syntax list 148 (New York, 1937).

7 The examples were taken from the source material used for the article Modern Spanish verb-form frequencies, by W. E. Bull et al., Hispania 30.451-66 (1947), and a file of almost 9000 reflexive verbs already collected for a study of the reflexive and the passive voice. Over 500 separate sources were sampled; it may' be assumed that any statistical analysis will not be slanted by individual mannerisms, national preferences, or the particular genre or subject matter, and that the total set of examples will give an accurate cross section of usage and a reliable basis for statistical quantification of any information furnished by the native collaborators.

8 'The collaborators on this project were chosen with three points in mind: first, that they, should not have been in an English environment long enough to lose their feeling for their native tongue, nor to have acquired English as a daily substitute for it; second, that they should be teachers of the language who, consequently, would possess more than an average understanding of the problem and would have some practice in self-analysis; and third, that they should be natives of different countries, so that the possibility of localisms might be detected. Dr. Cantón, now visiting professor in the University of Illinois, is Licenciado en Humanidades from the University of Panamá and Professor of Castilian at the Escuela Normal de Panamá. He is also, by avocation, a novelist and short-story writer; 33 examples were chosen from his writings by the analyst so that the author could be directly questioned about his intentions in the choice of forms. Only one example was encountered in which he would accept the alternate form as even a remote possibility. Professor Cantón has been in the States four years. Sra. Consuelo Uribe de Wise is a graduate of Caracas, Venezuela, and at present an instructor at Webster College, St. Louis. She also has been here four years.

9 For further discussion of this problem, see W. E. Bull and Rodger Farley, An exploratory study of the nature of actions and the function of verbs in Spanish, Hispania 32.64-73 (1949).

10 A spontaneous remark by Sra. Wise, made during the research on this project when, one evening, we were unable to finish a group of cards which we had expected to complete. We did not have the objective situation under control.

11 For further discussion of this problem see W. E. Bull, Related functions of haher and estar, MLJ 27.119-23 (1943).