Notes on the clitic se in middle constructions with the Spanish verbs matar and morir

This paper intends to consider the clitic se as middle in sentences with the verbs matar and morir in Spanish. In order to do so, we will propose the hypothesis that this clitic is not sustained as an energetic reflexive (Maldonado, 1988) in all its possible constructions. Considering so, certain characteristics proposed by generative semantics (Lakoff, 1970; McCawley, 1973; Hofmann, 1993), in addition to the anticausativization process proposed by Zubizarreta (1985), should be considered in an attempt to demonstrate that some of these constructions can be established as middle constructions.