Reflexives and Reflexivity

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the various means that languages use to represent interpretive dependencies and reflexive predicates. These means are exemplified on the basis of a broad variety of languages. The patterns are prima facie complex, involving semireflexives, full reflexives, and affixal reflexives. Yet they can be accounted for on the basis of the morphosyntactic properties of the elements involved, together with the way these elements interact with a number of universal principles and the syntactic environment. The central principles involved are (a) a principle restricting chain formation by Agree and (b) a general principle applying to reflexive predicates that requires them to be licensed, either through the addition of structural complexity for protection or through a lexical bundling operation, governed by (c) an economy principle. Although I conclude that there is no unified notion of what a reflexive is, reflexives do have a shared core, namely their role in the licensing of reflexivity.