Linguistic Discovery 6.1:40-63 A Frequentist Explanation of Some Universals of Reflexive Marking*

This paper identifies a number of empirically observable universals of reflexive marking that concern the existence of a special reflexive pronoun and the length of the marker that is used in reflexive constructions, in various different positions of the nonreflexive or reflexive pronoun. Most of the proposed universals have been mentioned earlier in the literature, but they have not been very prominent because the literature on binding has focused on language-specific generalizations rather than identifying readily testable cross-linguistic generalizations. I argue that all of these universals have their basis in a frequency asymmetry: Under different circumstances, the likelihood of an anaphoric pronoun being coreferential with the subject can be quite different, and this is argued to be the motivation for the universal patterns of form. 1. Some explananda In this paper, I propose frequency-based explanations of a number of universal contrasts in the form of reflexive marking, and I compare them with widely assumed generative explanations. The methodology of my approach is rather different from the well-known generative approach, so I make its methodological foundations explicit in §2, before advancing and discussing seven universals of reflexive marking in §3-7. In §8 I briefly address further methodological implications and draw conclusions. To get a first idea of the kinds of phenomena that I will deal with in this paper, let us look at some potentially relevant contrasts of reflexive marking. First, some languages such as Russian have a contrast between introverted (usually self-directed) and extroverted (usually other-directed) verbs (Haiman 1983:803), whereas other languages such as German lack this contrast. This is seen in (1)-(2). (1) Russian a. Vanja moet-sja. (#moet sebja) ‘Vanja washes himself. ’ (‘washes himself’) b. Vanja nenavidit sebja (*nenavidit-sja) ‘Vanja hates himself.’ (2) German a. Gertrud wäscht sich