Talk:Reflexive verb

Slavic reflexives
Thanks for correcting the Russian words, Wakuran, but in the process you restored the inconsistency (odety doesn't transliterate одеть in any system I know of), and deleted some of the improvements I made. In linguistics articles we usually use scientific transliteration. Transliteration should be offered first, since we are talking about the spoken words regardless of the orthography, and this is primarily a Latin-alphabet encyclopedia (most anglophones can't comprehend Cyrillic letters at all). Cyrillic spelling can optionally be offered as a reference, but is not necessary. You also demoted the reference to Ukrainian—there's no reason for that. The languages and principal should be named first, and then it's okay to show examples in Russian. It does make me wonder if -sja is really a contraction of the non-Ukrainian sebja). Anyone know which other Slavic languages work similarly?  —Michael Z. 2006-09-14 19:42 Z 
 * Serbo-Croatian reflexive verbs are marked by the clitic se within the clause, which is analyzed syntactically as a distinct word. It certainly does look like a reduced form of the reflexive pronoun sebe. ALTON   .ıl  06:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Spelling in native character set should be default. Transliteration is not exact and makes it difficult to accurately pronounce the words. If you can't read Cyrillic characters, then it probably doesn't matter what the Russian word is to you anyway. --Jon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.244.161.99 (talk) 03:31, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Transliteration is used for precisely those readers who don't read the script, of course it's not exact. ALTON   .ıl  06:42, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Reflexive Laugh
Why isn't the Spanish verb, "reirse" included in the table with laugh? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.154.184 (talk) 00:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Icelandic needed
F.ex. the forms kollu+mk - I call myself - kalla+sk - (s)he call him/her-self - (Old Icelandic). The modern forms are replacing end "k" for "t" I think. Said: Rursus (☻) 12:11, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Object in genitive
There is a whole subclass of reflexive verbs which can have a direct object in genitive. For instance, compare the Slovenian reflexive "učiti se glasbe" ("to learn music") with non-reflexive "učiti glasbo" ("to teach music"). Some of them can be inherent reflexive verbs (where maybe the original non-reflexive form once existed), but not all of them. Perhaps they should be mentioned as a separate category? Said: 89.164.174.120 (talk) 13:14, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Any outsiders?
Are there reflexive verbs in languages other than Indo-Europan ones? Trigaranus (talk) 18:58, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Lithuanian
In Lithuanian language it is possible to form reflexive verb forms with a pronoun (unusual) and with a particle si which comes between the root and the prefix, or after the ending if there is no prefix. But there are exceptions when the particle cannot be used and the reflexive pronoun must be used, e.g. Petras nekenčia savęs, which cannot be said with the particle si (i.e., Petras nesikenčia). But my linguistical knowledge of Lithuanian is very limited.Kazkaskazkasako (talk) 20:04, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Autocausative example
It seems to me that the Spanish reflexive verb ofenderse is more likely anticausative than autocausative. In Spanish the anticausative reflexive is used interchangeably with the passive voice, so Pedro se ofendió por... means "Pedro was offended by..." A better example would be perderse, to become lost (Pedro se perdió). Would this same analysis be valid for the other languages used in the example? Peter Chastain (talk) 21:38, 4 August 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree that Pedro se ofendió por... is a passive voice. That would be Pedro fue ofendido por.... It's just that you use the same preposition. For example, in Italian you can use Pietro si offese per... (followed by the cause of the offence) but in the passive you use Pietro fu offeso da... (followed by the actor who caused the offence). Balabiot (talk) 18:40, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Target audience
I'd just like to get the experts thinking about the target audience. Wikipedia is not supposed to be at the level of expert language. I'm well educated but come from an era (1970s and 1980s) of education in an English speaking country (Australia) where the actual structure of language was not really taught. When I now turn to Wikipedia to find out definitions for things like reflexive verbs, I find the text almost impenetrable because each sentence is loaded with references to other technical terms that I'm unfamiliar with. I just find that the whole topic of language throughout Wikipedia lacks top level overviews and is far less accessible that topics like history and science. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.240.177.119 (talk) 11:08, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * That might be because in English there is no reflexive verb (almost). I'm not a linguist and not even an English native speaker, but my first language has reflexives and I find the article pretty easy to follow. However I agree that more top level overviews would be useful. Balabiot (talk) 18:42, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Missing group when the agent is also the "receiver" of the action?
I know Italian and Czech, and there is another kind of reflexive verb not included in the page, corresponding to Czech si. For example,
 * pronajmout byt => to rent an apartment (to someone), nonreflexive
 * pronajmout si byt => to rent an apartment (from someone, literally "to yourself"), reflexive

Another use of si is with many verbs that admit a proper reflexive:
 * miju se => I wash myself (Italian mi lavo)
 * miju si ruce => I wash my hands (Italian mi lavo le mani)

The latter is often called in Italian "apparent reflexive" or indirect reflexive. but I do not have the knowledge to insert this in the page. Thanks! Balabiot (talk) 18:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)


 * The same holds for Croatian, Serbian and Slovene, as far as I can tell dnik ► 11:21, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Reflexive for "sink"
I'm not that familiar with other Slavic languages, but I assure you that besides an intransitive tonuti Croatian has potopiti which is transitive, so one can say "brod se potopio".

In this instance, the se has a middle meaning (could sink without any agent, it was old...). dnik ► 11:18, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Inalienable Possession
In some European languages,reflexive verbs are used when the object is a body part, but non-reflexive verbs are used when the object is not a body part. For instance:

English: Peter washes his hands.

Spanish: Peter se lava los manos.

German : Peter wäscht sich die Hände.

English: Peter washes his clothes.

Spanish: Peter lava su ropa.

German : Peter wäscht seine Kleidung.

This is, at least sometimes, sometimes part of a pattern of dative external possessors for body parts. In German, it seems that dative external possessors can only be pronominal.

English: Peter cuts my hair.

Spanish: Peter me corta el pelo.

German : Peter schneidet mir die Haare.

English: Peter washes my clothes.

Spanish: Peter lava mi ropa.

?Spanish:Peter me lava la ropa.

German : Peter wäscht meine Kleidung.

English: Peter cuts her hair.

Spanish: Peter le corta el pelo.

German : Peter schneidet ihr die Haare.

English: Peter washes her clothes.

Spanish: Peter lava la ropa.

?Spanish:Peter le lava la ropa.

German : Peter wäscht ihre Kleidung.

English: Peter cuts Maria's hair.

Spanish: Peter le corta el pelo a María.

German : Peter schneidet Marias Haar(e).

English: Peter washes Maria's clothes.

Spanish: Peter lava la ropa de María.

German : Peter wäscht Marias Kleidung.

I noticed that the article didn't mention this, but not fluent in Spanish or German, and I'm not certain I know exactly how this fits into larger patterns. 2600:1700:8C10:8770:ED0D:5491:BC1E:6F24 (talk) 19:33, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Later I found this German example from http://www.dartmouth.edu/~deutsch/Grammatik/WordOrder/Infinitives.html:

Er bindet sich die Schuhe mit einer hand.

= He ties his shoes with one hand.

This shows "his shoes" being treated like body parts. The examples I labeled "?Spanish" are ones I got from Deep L that show a similar phenomena in that they seem to be treating "my/her/his clothes" the same way as body parts.

respellings
On April 2, besides adding a reference, changed certain words:
 * reflexivized → reflexive (once)
 * reciprocality → reciprocity (in multiple places)
 * de-transitivize → de-transitive (once)
 * agentivity → agentively (in multiple places)

The last one is particularly baffling, changing a noun to an adverb. I wonder whether all of these were uncritically changing "misspelled" words (rare terms of art) to more common words. —Tamfang (talk) 03:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Slavic vs Slavic

 * The enclitic reflexive pronoun sa/se/si/się is used in Western and South Slavic languages, while Eastern Slavic languages use the suffix -sja (-ся).

The sentence structure suggests a significant contrast here, but I don't see one. What would be lost if it were changed to Slavic languages use an enclitic reflexive pronoun sa/se/si/się/sja or even Slavic languages use an enclitic reflexive pronoun derived from Proto-Slavic ___? —Tamfang (talk) 01:27, 27 November 2023 (UTC)