reflexives in subject position

[Balthasar Bickel]

The following question was recently posted on FUNKNET and, with
apologies for duplicates, I cc this to LINGTYP:

Nino Amiridze wrote:
> I would really appreciate it if you could give me any references on
> reflexives in subject position. Or perhaps any of you know a language(s)
> allowing reflexives in subject position.
>
> My native language Georgian besides the "normal" reflexivization
>
> (1) prezident-ma       ixsna         tavis-i    tav-i
>     president-erg   he-saved-him   self's-nom  head-nom
>           "The president saved himself"
>
> allows subject reflexives as well:
>
> (2) 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).

Reflexives in A function (and with a truly anaphoric function) are also
attested in Nepali, e.g.,

aaphai-le     Raam-laaii barbaad  gar-yo.
self:EMPH-ERG R.-DAT     spoiling do-PT3sM
‘Ram got himself spoiled.’ (from Bickel & Yadava, 'A fresh look at
grammatical relations in Indo-Aryan', in press, Lingua 2000)

In his 1994 book, Dixon (p. 238f) suggests that reflexives in A function
involve "verb[s] referring to a mental process", quoting Modern Greek
and Basque as examples. Nepali fully confirms this pattern. Georgian
apparently doesn't, but it is interesting to note that the (b) reading
in (2) above has a non-volitional flavor to it that is also
characteristic of Nepali.

Is anybody aware of other instances of reflexive pronouns in A function,
and of semantic effects tied to such constructions?

Balthasar Bickel.