Resumen de A unified view on indefinite subject and object drop in Spanish: Internal arguments of intransitive constructions as a test case

Carlos Martínez-García, Esther Rinke, Nelli Kerezova

• This paper demonstrates how our understanding of indefinite object drop can inform our understanding of other constructions involving bare nouns and indefinite null arguments in Spanish. We extend the proposal of indefinite object drop developed by Martínez-García et al. (2025) to internal arguments of some intransitive constructions (specifically, unaccusative and passive se-constructions). Our findings reveal that the same lexical constraints that govern the distribution of indefinite object drop in Spanish also apply to indefinite subject drop in intransitive constructions. Consequently, we propose a unified analysis of indefinite argument drop. This contributes to a better understanding of the distribution of indefinite argument drop, and also of unaccusative and (analytic and se) passive constructions in Spanish. In particular, our analysis provides further support for analyzing passive se-constructions as being similar to unaccusatives and impersonal se-constructions, as independently claimed in Ormazabal & Romero (2024).