Reflexive verb
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In grammar, a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object) are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself.
There are languages that have explicit morphology to transform a verb into a reflexive form. English employs reflexive derivation idiosyncratically, as in self-destroy; Romance languages do the same with the prefix auto-.
In many languages, reflexive constructions are rendered by transitive verbs followed by a reflexive pronoun, as in English -self (e. g., She threw herself to the floor.).
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[edit] Romance and Slavic languages
Both Romance and Slavic languages make extensive use of reflexive verbs and reflexive forms.
In the Romance languages, there are non-emphatic clitic reflexive pronouns and emphatic ones. In Spanish, for example, the particle se is cliticized to the verb (lavarse "to wash oneself"), while in Romanian, the particle precedes the verb (a se spăla "to wash oneself"). Full reflexive pronouns or pronominal phrases are added for emphasis or to avoid ambiguity: Yo me cuido a mí mismo "I take care of myself" (mí is the emphatic reflexive; mismo means "same", in the sense of "one's own (self)"). In French, the particle se is independent (se laver "to wash oneself").
Clitic reflexive pronoun se/się is used in Western and South Slavic languages, while Eastern Slavic languages use suffix -sja (-ся). There is also the non-clitic emphatic pronoun sebe/себя, used to emphasize the reflexive nature of the act; it is applicable only to "true" reflexive verbs, where the agent performs a (transitive) action on itself.
The principal syntactic difference between the two language groups is that Slavic languages use the same reflexive pronoun in all three persons, while the Romance languages maintain the distinction only in 3rd person; for the 1st and 2nd person, appropriate personal pronoun in oblique case is used:
| French | Serbo-Croatian | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Singular | Plural | Singular | Plural | |
| 1st person | Je me souviens | Nous nous souvenons | Ja se sjećam | Mi se sjećamo |
| 2nd person | Tu te souviens | Vous vous souvenez | Ti se sjećaš | Vi se sjećate |
| 3rd person | Il se souvient | Ils se souviennent | On se sjeća | Oni se sjećaju |
In both language groups, reflexive forms often present a great obstacle for foreign learners[1][2] (notably, native English speakers, where the feature is practically absent) due to variety of uses. Even in languages which contain the feature, it is not always applicable to the same verbs and uses, (although a common subset can be generally extracted, as outlined below). For example, Spanish reflexive construct Se hundió el barco (the boat sank) has no reflexive equivalent in Slavic languages (which use intransitive equivalent of sink);.
Reflexive verbs can have the variety of uses and meanings, which often escape consistent classification. Some language-common identified uses are outlined below[3]. For example, Davies et al.[1] identify 12 uses for Spanish reflexive constructions; Vinogradov [4] divides Russian reflexive verbs into as much as 16 groups.
- "True" reflexive, denoting that the agent is simultaneously the patient. The verb is typically transitive, and can be used in non-reflexive meaning as well.
| Language | Examples | Compare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Pedro se baña. | Pedro baña a la gata. | |
| Italian | Pietro si lava. | Pietro lava la gatta. | |
| Serbo-Croatian | Petar se kupa. | Petar kupa mačku. | |
| Polish | Piotr kąpie się. | Piotr kąpie kota. | |
| Russian | Пётр купается. | Пётр купает котa. | |
| English | Peter takes a bath. | Peter washes the cat. | |
- "Reciprocal", denoting that the agents perform the mutual actions among themselves. In most cases, the transitive verbs are also used.
| Language | Examples | Compare | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spanish | María y Pedro se besan. | María besa a Pedro. | |
| Italian | Maria e Pietro si baciano. | Maria bacia Pietro. | |
| Serbo-Croatian | Marija i Petar se ljube. | Marija ljubi Petra. | |
| Polish | Maria i Piotr całują się. | Maria całuje Piotra. | |
| Russian | Мария и Пётр целуются. | Мария целуeт Пётрa. | |
| English | Мaria and Peter kiss. | Maria kisses Peter | |
- "Anticausative", where the (usually, inanimate) patient of a causative verb becomes the subject, and the "", but the cause has been subtracted [5]
| Spanish | La puerta se abrió. |
|---|---|
| Italian | La porta si aprì. |
| Serbo-Croatian | Vrata su se otvorila. |
| Polish | Drzwi otworzyły się. |
| Russian | Дверь открылась. |
| English | The door opened. |
- "Autocausative", where the (usually, animate) "the referent represented by the subject combines the activity of actor and undergoes a change of state like a patient[5]:
| Language | Examples |
|---|---|
| Spanish | Pedro se ofendió. |
| Italian | Pietro si offese. |
| Serbo-Croatian | Petar se uvrijedio. |
| Polish | Piotr obraził się. |
| Russian | Пётр обижался. |
| English | Peter got offended. |
- "Inherent" reflexive verbs lack the corresponding non-reflexive from which they can be synchronically derived[5]:
| Language | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Pedro se arrepintió. | Pedro se queja. |
| Italian | Pietro si pentiva. | Pietro si lamenta. |
| Serbo-Croatian | Petar se pokajao. | Petar se žali. |
| Polish | Piotr żałował. | Piotr skarży się. |
| Russian | Пётр раскаялся. | Пётр жаловаeтся. |
| English | Peter regretted. | Peter complains. |
- "Intransitive" form (also known as "reflexive impersonal", or mediopassive) take the intransitive verbs with omitted agent. In Slavic languages, practically "the only condition is that they can be construed as having a human agent. The applied human agent can be generic, or loosely specified collective or individual"[6]. The grammatical subject is either omitted (in pro-drop languages) or dummy pronoun (otherwise). Thus, those verbs are defective, as they have only the 3rd person singular (masculine or neutrum, depending on language) form.
| Language | Examples | |
|---|---|---|
| Spanish | Aquí se trabaja bien. | Se dice que... |
| Italian | Qui si lavora bene. | Si dice che... |
| Serbo-Croatian | Tu se radi dobro. | Smatra se da... |
| Polish | Tam pracuje się dobrze. | Myśli się, że... |
| Russian | Здесь хорошо работается. | Думается, что... |
| English | Here [people] work well. | It is thought that... |
In many cases, there is a semantic overlap of the impersonal/anticausative/autocausative constructs with passive voice (also present in all Romance and Slavic languages)[6]. On one hand, impersonal reflexive constructs have a wider scope of application, as they are not limited to transitive verbs like the cannonical passive voice. On the other hand, those constructs can have slight semantic difference or markedness.
[edit] Germanic languages
Many Germanic languages express reflexivity in a similar way to English, but without an explicit reflexive suffix corresponding to -self, i. e., simply using the accusative pronoun, as in German: Ich wasche mich ("I wash myself", lit. "I wash me").
[edit] External links
- edited by R. M. W. Dixon & A. Y. Aikhenvald. Changing valency: Case studies in transitivity. Research Centre for Linguistic Typology, Le Trobe University, Melbourne.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Mark Davies, James Jones, Nicole Tracy. Syntactic features, register variation, and the language learner: the case of se in Spanish...
- ^ Reflexive Verbs: An Introduction. About.com:Spanish Language.
- ^ María Luisa Rivero & Milena M. Sheppard. On Impersonal se / się in Slavic. Current Issues in Formal Slavic Linguistics. G. Zybatow, et al., Eds. 137-147. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main. 2002..
- ^ V. V. Vinogradov. Russkiy Yazik.
- ^ a b c Mair Parry. The Reinterpretation of the Reflexive in Piedmontese: Impersonal 'Se' Constructions. Transactions of the Philological Society, Vol.96:1 (1998) (63-116).
- ^ a b Milja Djurkovic. Passive and Impersonal in English and Serbian. Research Centre for English and Applied Linguistics University of Cambridge.
