Categories and Functions of Reflexive Verbs in Seventeenth-Century Russian

A corpus of over 5,000 forms from Russian texts were analyzed in order to examine the acquisition by reflexive Vs, once agglutination of the reflexive particle was complete, of other meanings in addition to the reflexive proper. Five semantic categories were identified: reflexive proper, reciprocal reflexive, reflexive-middle, reflexive-passive, & impersonal reflexive. Reflexive Vs proper reflect most clearly the pre-agglutination syntactic relationship between V & enclitic reflexive pronoun, exhibiting a regular syntactic synonymity with the construction "transitive V + sebja." The subject of these Vs & of reciprocal reflexive Vs is invariably animate. In the latter category, however, the link with the earlier construction is more tenuous & reciprocal reflexive Vs are rarely encountered without some extra linguistic indicator of reciprocity. With Vs of reflexive-middle voice the link between the reflexive particle & its origin is at its weakest & there is a frequent loss of correlation between the derived reflexive V & the underlying nonreflexive V. Reflexive-middle Vs denoting external, physical changes in the agent have both animate & inanimate subjects, though in the latter case they approach the category of reflexive-passive; reflexive-middle Vs denoting internal, mental states almost invariably have an animate subject. With reflexive-passive Vs the presence of an agential construction is an important (though not essential) marker of passive, as opposed to middle voice. Two constructions are found: "instrumental case without preposition" & the now obsolete "ot + genitive case," the latter confined to animate agents. The modern Russian limitation of reflexive-passive Vs to the imperfective aspect is not in evidence. The role of the reflexive particle in creating impersonal reflexive Vs is much more restricted than in modern Russian; in the data examined there are no impersonal reflexive Vs denoting atmospheric or meteorological phenomena, natural phenomena, or predisposition to physical action, & only a very small number denoting predisposition to a mental attitude. 30 References. AA