The event structure of reciprocal verbs and its implications for bidirectionality

Abstract

In this article we present a detailed description of the event structure of the reciprocal situations expressed lexically in Spanish. The description is based on the sentences extracted from a Spanish corpus. We put forward a proposal that involves differentiating between the simple or multiple nature of the reciprocal event and also between the independent or dependent relation of the subevents that make up a reciprocal situation. We characterize reciprocal verbs according to an aspectual typology and we also contribute a new analysis of the so-called collective verbs in order to distinguish them from reciprocal predicates. Finally, we propose a redefinition of the condition of bidirectionality for reciprocal situations.