Reflexivization

This dissertation investigates Georgian (Kartvelian) reflexivization strategies within the Government and Binding (Chomsky 1981) and Reflexivity framework (Reinhart and Reuland 1993). It argues that Georgian possesses one simplex and one complex nominal reflexivization strategy, based on a grammaticalized body-part noun. This strategy interacts with a verbal reflexivization strategy.

This dissertation discusses a non-anaphoric use of the phrase formally identical with the complex nominal reflexivization strategy in Object Camouflage (Harris 1981). The contrasting behavior of the phrase as an anaphor and as a pronominal is argued to illustrate the grammaticalization process the body-part has undergone.

The present study observes several problems for the Binding and Reflexivity frameworks, such as the subject use of the Georgian complex nominal reflexivization strategy. If 'Himself is killing him' is ungrammatical in English, its Georgian equivalent is grammatical with the "aspect/property of” reading. This study discusses Madame Tussaud's and similar contexts that allow a proxy reading of Georgian anaphors in subject position. This use is a problem also for various other proposals in the generative literature that aim to explain the absence/presence of subject anaphors cross-linguistically.

En este trabajo se indaga sobre la estructura argumental de los verbos pronominales en español y en neerlandés, y se explica la variación interlingüística y la pseudo-opcionalidad de la partícula pronominal recurriendo a fenómenos de interficie léxico-sintaxis y sintaxis-fonología. En concreto se proponen operaciones de reducción del predicado para los verbos pronominales y una operación de expansión del predicado para los verbos pronominales alternantes, es decir, aquellos que permiten pseudo-opcionalidad con respecto a la presencia de la partícula pronominal. La variación interlingüística se explica recurriendo en primer lugar a la parametrización de la aplicación de las operaciones a nivel de interficie léxico-sintaxis y, en segundo lugar, a reglas de materialización fonológica que actúan sobre la partícula pronominal a nivel de interficie sintaxis-fonología.

The dissertation investigates reflexivization strategies of Georgian (Kartvelian), a language with a split between the nominative and active alignment in both case and agreement marking. The work identifies one simplex and one complex nominal reflexivization strategies, both based on a grammaticalized body-part noun. A precise description of the strategies is offered within the Binding (Chomsky 1981) and Reflexivity Theories (Reinhart and Reuland 1993). Georgian additionally has a verbal reflexivization strategy, the prefix 'i-' which interacts in an interesting way with the nominal strategies. Reflexivity Theory makes it possible to study the behavior of the two nominal strategies with respect to the verbal strategy. Apart from describing the anaphoric system of Georgian the work offers a discussion on the apparent violations of principles of either the Binding Theory or the Reflexivity Theory. One of such violations is a non-anaphoric/pronominal use of the phrase formally ...

Being distinct from other languages, Turkish has two different reflexive markers ''kendi'' and ''kendisi'. Although both markers refer to third person singular, they cannot be used interchangeably. Especially 'kendisi' attracted so much attention because of its dual nature as it can be used both locally and non-locally. Nevertheless, there has not been much emphasis on 'kendi' since it has been assumed that 'kendi' can only be locally bound. Furthermore, although the issue of psychological distance (intimacy) between the speaker and the referent has been claimed to have an effect on reflexive selections, there has not been an experimental study designed before to prove this assumption. By taking all of these into consideration, this research aims to test two main issues: whether the anaphor 'kendi' is perceived as a strict local anaphor by native Turkish speakers and how the psychological distance (intimacy) between speaker and referent influences the way Turkish native speakers use anaphors. Within the frame of these research targets, a two-phased experimental design has been developed and applied to 65 participants in total. The age of participants differed between 17-27 years old. The first experiment was a Translation Task, whereas the second experiment was a Forced-Choice Task. After analysis of the first part, it has been concluded that although strict local anaphors are used in English sentences, the participants did not stick to the use of 'kendi' which is supposedly a strict local anaphor. According to the data of the second task, the results did not comply with the literature. Whereas it was expected to see 'kendi' in informal situations and 'kendisi' in formal situations, we concluded that there was no significant difference between the preferences made between 'kendi' and 'kendisi' depending on the T-test analysis.

Russian and Bulgarian possess formally similar
reflexive constructions with the dative of experiencer, which
have the common meaning of an uncontrolled/involuntary action.
The paper brings forward the points of similarity and difference
in semantics, co-occurrence patterns, stylistic behavior of these
constructions in the two languages