reciprocals as subjects

[Amiridze, Nino]

Dear Jose-Luis Mendivil,

thank you so much for your message and the Spanish sentences. They are
an excellent example how misleading can the form be:

>(2)     Me golpeo a mi mismo
>        (I) hit myself
>(3)     Yo mismo me golpeo
>        I myself hit(me)

Spanish is like many other languages having reflexives and intensifiers
of the same form. So we have to be careful when discussing the subject
status of 'mismo', as I understood, in (3).

But I do not see how Spanish is related to the Basque case where the
phrase 'bere burua' is a subject argument (cf. (1)). The head of the
phrase 'burua' is marked by ERG. And I think (please correct me if I am
mistaken) reflexives do not resemble intensifiers in Basque. So there is
no way to consider 'bere buruak' in (1) as an intensifier. It is a
reflexive phrase and it is an argument of the verb unlike the Spanish
intensifier in (3) being an adjunct:

>   (1)     neure buruak hilko nau
>           my head-DET-ERG it.kills.me aux
>           Lit.: Myself kills me

Basque looks very much like Georgian not only by having a
grammaticalized body-part for "head" for reflexives but also by allowing
the reflexives to appear as subjects (cf. (7)).

Georgian is a very transparent case since there reflexives and
intensifiers are distinct by form (although both originating from the
same body-part tav- "head"). So there is absolutely no way to mix
reflexives and intensifiers by form in Georgian as it is possible for
instance, in English or Spanish.

As example (4) and its pro-dropped version in (5) make it clear in
Georgian it is ungrammatical to have a reflexive instead of the
intensifier:

(4)     tavad / *[tavis-i tav-i] p'rezident'-i daesc'ro shexvedra-s
        INTENSIFIER / REFLEXIVE president-NOM he.attended.it meeting-DAT
        "The president himself attended the meeting"

(5)     tavad / *[tavis-i tav-i] daesc'ro shexvedra-s
        INTENSIFIER / REFLEXIVE he.attended.it meeting-DAT
        "He himself attended the meeting"

Just like it is ungrammatical to have an intensifier instead of the
reflexive (cf. (6)):

(6)     p'rezident'-ma ixsna tavis-i tav-i / *tavad
        president-ERG he.saved.him REFLEXIVE/INTENSIFIER
        "The president saved himself"

There is no way to consider the reflexive phrase as an intensifier
either in (7):

(7)     [tavis-ma tav-ma]/ *tavad ixsna p'rezident'-i
        [REFLEXIVE(ERG)] / INTENSIFIER he.saved.him president-NOM
        Lit: Himself saved the president
        "Something related to the president saved him"

The reflexive in (7) is a subject argument of the verb just like the
phrase "tavis-ma mcvel-ma" in (8):
(8)     [tavis-ma mcvel-ma] ixsna p'rezident'-i
        self's-ERG bodyguard-ERG he.saved.him president-NOM
        Lit: His.own bodyguard saved the president
        "The president was saved by his own bodyguard"

If we try to substitute the intensifier for the reflexive in (7) we get
a different sentence (compare the translations of (7) and (9)):

(9)     tavad ixsna p'rezident'-i
        INTENSIFIER he.saved.him president-NOM
        "(He) himself saved the president"

The reflexive phrase 'tavis-ma tav-ma' in (7) is in an anaphoric
relation with the object of the verb - prezident-i. While the
intensifier 'tavad' in (9) is an adjunct to the pro-dropped pronominal
serving as a subject of the verb:

(9')    tavad man ixsna p'rezident'-i
        INTENSIFIER he(ERG) he.saved.him president-NOM
        "He himself saved the president"

Therefore, it is not possible to consider the subject uses of reflexives
as intensifiers in Georgian and thus put them away as not truely
reflexive. Anyway this will not help us with the subject uses of
reciprocals where it is very hard to find some other label for the
reciprocals for explaning their behaviour (cf. (10) or the sentence
from my very first message given here as (11)):

(10)    ertmanet-i gvaopcebs chven
        RECIPROCAL-NOM it.surprises.us we(DAT)
        Lit.: Each other surprise us
        "We are surprised by something related to each other"

(11)    ertmanet-i k'lavt ivane-s da meri-s
        each.other-nom it.kills.them John-dat and Mary-dat
        Lit.: Each other kill John and Mary
         "Something related to each other makes John and Mary suffer"

Thank you.

Sincerely,

nino amiridze


Jose-Luis Mendivil [SMTP:jlmendi at POSTA.UNIZAR.ES]
-----Original Message-----
From: Jose-Luis Mendivil
To: FUNKNET at LISTSERV.RICE.EDU
Sent: 5/29/2002 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: reciprocals as subjects

Dear Nino:

Although far from being an expert in Basque, I agree with Jon Aske: I
can't see the example in (1) as an instance of a 'reflexive subject':

>
>   (1)     neure buruak hilko nau
>           my head-DET-ERG it.kills.me aux
>           Lit.: Myself kills me

Of course there is an anaphoric relation between subject and object,
as in the following Spanish examples:

(2)     Me golpeo a mi mismo
        (I) hit myself
(3)     Yo mismo me golpeo
        I myself hit(me)

In (2) we have a pro-dropped nominative subject (yo) and a dative
reflexive, but in (3), with the same propositional meaning, we have
not a subject reflexive but a nominative argument subject with an
intensifier 'myself' and a pro-dropped (co-referential with the
clitic 'me', as in (2)) dative object. In spite of that, in (3) the
reflexive is the object, not the subject.

Best regards,
Jose-Luis Mendivil.