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

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.

Reflexive also occurs in some natural languages in constructions that would
be active voice in English.  Some IE Examples:

"He is bored."
French "Il s'ennui" - He bores himself.

"I'm afraid of you."
Russian "Ya vas boyus'" - I fear myself of you.

"I study."
Lithuanian "As~ mokausi" - I study myself (?!?)

Note that all three of these languages have a reflexive pronoun:
se/sebya/save (They don't have a nominative case-- accusative is given).

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.

>
> 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)
In the above three languages, I think reflexive would still be used.

--
Theodore M. Kloba
http://netjunk.com/users/conlang/