Re: Reflexive (was Re: Help on Verbs...)

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Theodore Kloba wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
>
> >
> > Reflexive and reciprocative are two others.
> >
> > Reflexive means that the subject acts on him/herself, like "He killed
> > himself", it's similar to middle, and I'm not clear exactly what the
> > difference is.
>
> It does seem that reflexive and middle voice are very similar.  I think it
> depends on the way it's constructed ina particular language.
That's what I've always thought as well: reflexive uses an explicit
(object) pronoun to refer back to the subject and middle is a verbal
voice that doesn't need the pronoun.

> The Fr. example uses that pronoun (reduced to s' here), but the Ru. & Lt.
> verbs add a verbal suffix after the conjugated verb, s' in Russian, si in
> Lithuanian.
That's probably a clitic pronoun - like in French (am I right,
Mathias?). My Church Slavonic is a lot better than my Russian, and it
has a verbal suffix -sja for reflexive and mediopassive:
_krestistejsa_ "you (pl) have been baptized", _radujsja_ "rejoice"
(imperative singular). It is in effect a reduced form of _sebja_, the
object form of _sebe_ "himself, oneself".

> > Reciprocative is like reflexive, except it can only be used with plural
> > subjects and means that the subjects are acting *on each other*, like
> > "They killed each other" (compare "they killed themselves)
AFMCL: in Valdyan the dual and plural forms of the reflexive pronoun
have reciprocal meaning:

  le trudayt - they kill themselves
  ile trudayt - they (two) kill one another
  ale trudayt - they (more than two) kill each other

   Irina


            Varsinen an laynynay, saraz no arlet rastynay.
                     irina@rempt.xs4all.nl (myself)
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