Re: Inherently Reflexive Verbs (was: mental masturbation)

Sally Caves wrote:

>Kristian wrote:
>
>
>> Indeed, I'm curious what others have to say
>> about inherently reflexive words.
>
>Inherently reflexive as in that they can only be performed by the
>agent and to himself?  and they can't be put in passive form?
>
>Yawn?  fidget?  But these seem merely intransitive rather than
>reflexive.  Are you looking for words that seem to imply transitive
>action but that can't be performed on anyone/thing but the speaker?

Yes, something like that. Although I'm not sure about passive forms.
I suppose reflexives can be analyzed as transitive. Consider the
sentence: "He washed himself". Here the verb "wash" is used in a
reflexive manner. But it can also be considered transitive, where
"he" is the agent and "himself" is the patient. So if we were to
make a passive form of this we could have "He was washed by
himself".

The word "yawn" is indeed just intransitive. It has no sense of an
agent acting on a patient. OTOH, "to wash oneself" has a sense of an
agent acting on a patient, and is thereby transitive, but that the
patient happens to be the same individual as the agent, and is
thereby also reflexive. This is what I mean by inherently reflexive.

>Just some other possibilities in English:  "to wake up."  Could
>that be considered inherently reflexive?  I suppose you could say
>that you "wake up someone," but in our idiom it's usually "wake
>someone up," whereas we say "he woke up," not "he woke himself
>up."  But then again, this might simply be intransitive, and not
>reflexive.
The verb "to wake up" by itself is not inherently reflexive for
exactly the reasons and examples you give. Like I said, English does
not really have such verbs. But other languages do, and thereby
having, say, two words for "waking up". One would be glossed as "to
wake up (someone)", and the other as "to wake ONESELF up".

In Tagalog, for instance, there are two words for washing. One is
simply transitive, the other is inherently reflexive. These are:

<hugas> "to wash (something/someone)"
<ligo>  "to wash (oneself)"

So for instance, you can say:
<maghuhugas ako ng katawan ko> "I am bathing my body"
<maghuhugas ako ng bata> "I am bathing the child"

But you cannot say:
<*magliligo ako ng katawan ko> "*I am bathing (oneself) my body"
<*magliligo ako ng bata> "*I am bathing (oneself) the child"

Instead, <ligo> must be used in the following manner:
<magliligo ang bata> "the child is washing himself"
<magliligo ako> "I am washing myself"

-kristian- 8-)