reflexives in subject position

[Nino Amiridze]

            Dear Prof. Abraham,

thank you very much for your message.
>Hi, colleagues:
>Take a superficial look at the below! I am aghast and find myself
>rubbing my eyes: This has nothing to do with reflexivity in subject
>position!!! These are intensifiers with a reflexive form, but there is
>no antecedent and, consequently, no coreferentiality within local
>boundaries! In certain languages, among which German and Latin,
>this does not even have a reflexive form (Pers. pronoun-selbst;
>Pers. pronoun-ipse)!
>    What kind of conclusions do we have to draw from such awfully
>misguided contributions to the field - and, quite obviously, total
>naivete?! Werner

Please have a closer look at the examples like:
Georgian
(1) tavis-ma     tav-ma       ixsna        president-i
   self's-erg   head-erg   he-saved-him   president-nom
(a) "It was the president who saved himself, no one else is responsible for
saving him" (emphatic reading);
(b) "The president was out of the hard situation only because of himself
(his past doings, personal charm, etc.) but he could not even
imagine/know/accounted for that" (non-volitional reading).

They have no antecedent which can c-command them but it does not mean that
the sentence has no reflexive meaning. I agree that reflexive phrase
fuctions also as an intensifies in (a) reading of the sentence but there IS
reflexive meaning there. It means the following: "The president saved
himself (no one else helped him to do so)"
In (b) reading there is no emphasis at all. I do not think we can call
those phrases (Possessive + tav-) intensifiers. But still there is a
reflexive meaning there. No matter of the fact that there is no c-command
relation.

Sincerely,

  Nino Amiridze