# IE reflexive pronouns



## francisgranada

In the Slavic languages the reflexive pronoun (se, sa, si ...)  is used in all persons, while in the Romance and Germanic languages (se, si, sich ...) in the 1st and 2nd person the corresponding personal pronouns are used instead, for example (Slovak - Spanish):

myjem *sa - me *lavo
myješ *sa - **te *lavas
myje *sa *-  *se* lava  
etc. 

Why this difference, and which corresponds better to the supposed PIE situation?


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## learnerr

Three observations.

1) I don't know about other Slavic languages, but in Russian this kind of thing happens not only to the reflexive verbs, but also to the transitive verbs: "I read my book" is "я читаю свою книгу"; however, in Russian this happens not always, in some contexts, not this one, the "direct" pronoun is or may be preferred;

2) one difference between the two modes is that in the first one, people's experience, feeling and reaction is important (our feelings and our reaction does depend on whether the object of my action belongs to me), and in the second one, independent things in the world are important (my book is one thing, his book is another thing; I am one thing, he is another thing; my body is one thing, his body is another thing);

3) with Russian, Italian, English, and French, I have indeed often had the conclusion that Russian, in distinction to these three languages, prefers modes of saying that are relevant to our understanding of the world rather than to the world itself, while those three language seem to have, each in its own manner, the contrary attitude. What makes me think so are comparison of similar words (for example, in Russian the word свобода, "freedom", appears to refer to the feeling first of all, like in the song "Я свободен" by the group "Aria", not to the state of most possibility), comparison of loanwords (when Russian takes a loanword, like курьёз from curieux, for example, it takes a meaning closer to our experiences rather than to the description of the world; курьёз is something that makes laugh, not something that is interesting for its own nature), comparison of grammar (the distinction between perfective/imperfective aspect is impossible to explain in terms of how the world functions itself), and even comparison of how people behave in forums (when making _ad hominem_ attacks, Russians somehow like to question their opponents' intentions, asking them whether they have psychological problems, while English-speaking people like to question their opponents' competence, of the kind "who you are to argue with me").

So, could be psychology.
Of course, the latter observation was effected without any methodology, and the conclusion may simply have to do with the fact that English and Italian are not my native languages, while Russian is; so, the Russian ways of speaking appear "direct" to me, here that is more pertinent to the way how the world is thought, not how it is. So, take it simply as that: an individual observation.


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## francisgranada

learnerr said:


> ...  this kind of thing happens not only to the reflexive verbs, but also to the transitive verbs: "I read my book" is "я читаю свою книгу" ...


 Yes, I haven't mentioned this because I didn't want to start with a too complex question. Thus in Slavic the variants of _svoj/svoja/svoje _can be used in all persons while e.g. the Spanish _suyo/suya_ or the German _sein/seine/..._ only in the 3rd person. The same is valid also for the non-clitic (stressed) Slavic pronouns as _sebe, seba _etc... 

However, in case of the reflexive verbs the usage is grammaticalized, i.e. normally it's incorrect to say e.g in Slovak  "_ja *ma *(pers. pronoun) myjem_" instead of "_ja *sa *(refl. pronoun) myjem_" (Spanish: _"yo *me *lavo", _lit._ "I wash *me*_", meaning "_I wash myself_").


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## learnerr

francisgranada said:


> Yes, I haven't mentioned this becouse I didn't want to start with a too complex question.


I think those are parts of the same question. Yet another side: я уважаю *себя* vs. I respect *my*self and io *mi* rispetto. From here to lavarsi is one step.
A note, by the way, is that _suo_ means _third person's_, while _свой_ means _a person's own_.


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## francisgranada

learnerr said:


> ... From here to lavarsi is one step ...


No problem, even if there were more steps ... My question is not about the understanding of the different usage, but about the history of the concept of the reflexive pronouns from the IE point of view. 

An additional question: How do the reflexive pronouns work e.g. in Albanian, Celtic, Indo-Iranian etc ... i.e. in other IE languages ?


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## Gavril

francisgranada said:


> In the Slavic languages the reflexive pronoun (se, sa, si ...)  is used in all persons, while in the Romance and Germanic languages (se, si, sich ...) in the 1st and 2nd person the corresponding personal pronouns are used instead, for example (Slovak - Spanish):
> 
> myjem *sa - me *lavo
> myješ *sa - **te *lavas
> myje *sa *-  *se* lava
> etc.
> 
> Why this difference,



It's been speculated that early (or Proto-) Slavic speakers came into contact with speakers of Finnic languages, and that some mutual influence took place between the language groups.

In modern-day Finnish, you don't use the personal object-pronouns with reflexive verbs: thus, instead of *"_Pesin *minut*_" ("I washed *me*"), you'd say _Pesin *itseni*" _"I washed *myself*"), or you would use a special mediopassive form, often derived from the same verb stem (_"Pese*ydy*in"_ "I washed *(myself)*").

However, forms like _itseni_ are not fully comparable to Slavic reflexive pronouns like _se, si_ etc. because they specify the person/number of the subject: _itse_ means "self" and _-ni_ means "my".

Also,

- I don't know how old this construction is in Finnish, or whether it stretches back to common Finnic

- A similar development is seen in many other languages, including modern-day English (where, instead of *_"I washed *me*_", we say _"I washed *myself*"_, etc.)-- perhaps Slavic has simply taken the same tendency a bit further, eliminating the marker of person ("my-", "your-", "her-" etc.) entirely.


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## learnerr

Gavril said:


> - A similar development is seen in many other languages, including modern-day English (where, instead of *_"I washed *me*_", we say _"I washed *myself*"_, etc.)-- perhaps Slavic has simply taken the same tendency a bit further, eliminating the marker of person ("my-", "your-", "her-" etc.) entirely.


I feel a bit lost in the formulation… eliminating from where?
Yes, reformulated, the question appears to have been, whether originally the word that is the predecessor of se, si, себе, and other words in this line was a third person pronoun (with the reflexive meaning developed thereafter by Slavic), or it was originally a reflexive pronoun (whose usage was later changed to mean a third person by Romans), or it was something else. In such case, yes (to francisgranada), my reflexions involving the word _свой_, _suo_, etc, were unnecessary complications.


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## Gavril

*Francisgranada:*



francisgranada said:


> An additional question: How do the reflexive pronouns work e.g. in Albanian, Celtic, Indo-Iranian etc ... i.e. in other IE languages ?



In Ancient Greek, if I recall correctly, you had to use special reflexive forms of each pronoun:

- _Ékausa em*autón*_ "I burned myself" (as opposed to *_Ékausa emé_ "I burned me")

At least some of the Celtic languages are similar:

- Welsh _Fe losgais i fy *hun*_  "I burned my*self*"

I know Irish has a word cognate with W. _hun_ "self" but I don't whether the Irish word has to be used in reflexive contexts, or whether it's optional (e.g., used for emphasis).

Not sure about other IE branches at the moment.

*Learnerr:*



learnerr said:


> I feel a bit lost in the formulation… eliminating from where?



From whatever the previous construction was. E.g.,

Early or Pre-Slavic 
*_"I wash myself"_ 
> Slavic
_"I wash myself"_

I'm hypothesizing here that the current Slavic construction (where the reflexive pronoun is indifferent to the person/number of the subject) developed from an intermediate stage like English "myself"/"yourself"/etc., where there is both a pronoun agreeing with the person/number of the subject and an invariant reflexive pronoun/marker "-self".


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## ahvalj

So many ingenious ideas, as usual on this forum. Reinventing the 200 years of the Indo-European linguistics. Meanwhile, the science tells that the current Slavic (and Baltic) situation continues the Indo-European usage (Beekes, 1995: 209–211 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJY1IwVDdSNVBtMTQ/edit?usp=sharing)


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> So many ingenious ideas, as usual on this forum. Reinventing the 200 years of the Indo-European linguistics.



I wasn't attempting to re-invent anything; I was just speculating about a matter that I'm not an expert in.



> Meanwhile, the science tells that the current Slavic (and Baltic) situation continues the Indo-European usage (Beekes, 1995: 209–211 https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJY1IwVDdSNVBtMTQ/edit?usp=sharing)



Beekes states that the possessive adjective _*swos_ originally meant "my own", "your own", "his own" etc., but his position on the object pronoun *_se_ isn't as clear (from the pages you cited).

Were Greek _he(auton)_, Gothic _sik_ etc. (from p.210 of Beekes) used irrespectively of the person/number of the subject? My understanding is that, in most extant Greek and Gothic writing, these pronouns are exclusively 3rd person ("him-/her-/themselves") or impersonal ("oneself").


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## ahvalj

Unfortunately, those pages in Beekes' work is the most appropriate what I have in English and scanned. There are of course more detailed treatments, just I don't have them digitalized. Yes, in IE the reflexive pronoun *s(w)e- and its possessive derivative *swo- were used for all the three persons exactly like in modern Slavic and Baltic. In many branches it started to fade out, so in modern languages outside the Balto-Slavic branch we mostly find these pronouns separated per person, as in Romance and Germanic. I don't remember right now what was the situation in Classical Greek and in Gothic, it is quite possible that you are right, especially as to the Wulfila's Gothic. Note, however, the last remnants of the reflexive meaning in the Romance (French/Spanish) «il se lave/el se lava» ("he washes himself") vs. «il le lave/el lo lava» ("he washes somebody/something else").


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## francisgranada

Gavril said:


> ... In modern-day Finnish, you don't use the personal object-pronouns with reflexive verbs: thus, instead of *"_Pesin *minut*_" ("I washed *me*"), you'd say _Pesin *itseni*" _"I washed *myself*"), or you would use a special mediopassive form, often derived from the same verb stem (_"Pese*ydy*in"_ "I washed *(myself)*").


It is similar in Hungarian: _mag*am*, mag*ad* mag*a*_ ... corespond to _myself, thyself, himself_ ... And also special affixes can be use to express the reflexiveness, e.g. _mos*akod*om _(I wash myself).  So I don't exclude the common Finno-Ugric origin of this "solution". 


ahvalj said:


> ... Yes, in IE the reflexive pronoun *s(w)e- and its possessive derivative *swo- were used for all the three persons exactly like in modern Slavic and Baltic. In many branches it started to fade out ...


This seems to me probable because once the cathegory of reflexiveness existed, why should it be used (originally) only in the 3rd person? And at the same time, why should a pronoun origanally used only in the 3rd person replace the existing pers. pronouns in the 1st and 2nd person in the Slavic and Baltic ?


> ... Note, however, the last remnants of the reflexive meaning in the Romance (French/Spanish) «il se lave/el se lava» ("he washes himself") vs. «il le lave/el lo lava» ("he washes somebody/something else").


 This is valid also in the Slavic, and it could explain why the refl. pronoun "faded out" (if true) in the 1st and 2nd person, but not in the 3rd person (in the Romance, Germanic, etc .... languages).


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> Yes, in IE the reflexive pronoun *s(w)e- *and *its possessive derivative *swo- were used for all the three persons exactly like in modern Slavic and Baltic.


The would mean that PIE had a fully fledged (as apposed to a marker in conjunction with 1st or 2nd person personal pronouns) reflexive pronoun in non-possessive uses for 1st and 2nd person. This is certainly far beyond consensus view; in fact, I have never heard such a claim.


ahvalj said:


> Note, however, the last remnants of the reflexive meaning in the Romance (French/Spanish) «il se lave/el se lava» ("he washes himself") vs. «il le lave/el lo lava» ("he washes somebody/something else").


Last remnants? The reflexive pronoun is very much alive and plays an important role in Romance language.


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## ahvalj

Berndf, I am afraid I don't understand your first statement.

As to the Romance, of course it is alive: it is just confined to the 3rd person and Infinitive/Gerundial constructions (se laver/lavarse, se lavant/lavandose). I meant that while the personal pronoun itself is new, the old reflexive (and reflexive-possessive) pronoun was preserved and reinterpreted as its counterpart instead of being lost as in English, which has introduced a new form "himself" (it would have been: "I wash me/thou washest thee/he washeth se" — cp. the German situation). I suspect, a Germanic or Romance speaker does not fully feel the degree of abstraction the Slavic/Baltic/original IE reflexive forms express: they denote possession not tied to any person, so Russian "svoy/svoya/svoyo" is considerably more abstract than the etymologically related Spanish "suyo/suya".


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## ahvalj

To further illustrate the difference, let's take the possessive pronouns derived from the reflexive form: the French/Spanish "son travail/su trabajo" means "his/her job", while the Russian "svoya rabota" means "own's job", and there is a separate form for his ("yego rabota") and her ("yeyo rabota"). As far as I understand, there is no way in French or Spanish to distinguish between "his (own) job" and "his (other's) job" like it is possible in Russian and is possible in the abovementioned Romance constructions "il se lave/il le lave". Here we see the s-stem fully incorporated into the personal paradigm in Romance, in contrast to the proper personal pronouns, where "se" partly preserves its original reflexive meaning.


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## ahvalj

And, last but probably not least, I have found Meillet in the web: https://archive.org/stream/introductionl00meil#page/304/mode/1up

On the page 304 we read:
«Le sens de ce thème est «propre à une personne», et il s'applique en indo-européen à tous les nombres et à toutes les personnes, ainsi que l'adjectif possessif qui en est tiré».


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## learnerr

ahvalj said:


> I suspect, a Germanic or Romance speaker does not fully feel the degree of abstraction the Slavic/Baltic/original IE reflexive forms express: they denote possession not tied to any person, so Russian "svoy/svoya/svoyo" is considerably more abstract than the etymologically related Spanish "suyo/suya".


A side note: to me, the Romance way of saying я меня мою has from the very beginning struck as overly abstract. That is not the first time where I see that what is abstract for one is concrete to another and the other way around, so I just have to conclude that being abstract is a relative property. Relative of what? Relative of what one was intending to mean, I presume. An abstract description is a description that is pointed not at the thing itself that it intends to describe, but is directed via something else. In case one intends to describe the process of action, things like _I washed me_ (*) sound very abstract, they do not describe the nature of the action directly (which is that of self-washing), but instead get involved with carefully naming all actants.

(*) and, at least to me, even _I washed myself_: the English speakers feel the need to precisely say whose (myself) or what (himself) self they wash, additionally that "self" is put in the standard direct object position and, I suspect, is intonated accordingly, so this "self" sounds like a separate participant rather than a describer of the action.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> And, last but probably not least, I have found Meillet in the web: https://archive.org/stream/introductionl00meil#page/304/mode/1up
> 
> On the page 304 we read:
> «Le sens de ce thème est «propre à une personne», et il s'applique en indo-européen à tous les nombres et à toutes les personnes, ainsi que l'adjectif possessif qui en est tiré».



As far as I can tell, Meillet gives examples of the possessive adjective *_swos_ meaning "own" (as Beekes had done), and of other possible derivatives (e.g., Gothic _sidus_) that seem to reflect this meaning, but no examples outside Baltic or Slavic of the object pronoun *_se_ with the neutral meaning "self".

I'm not denying that the stem *_se-_ was originally neutral to the person/number of the adjoining noun. It's still not clear to me, though, why reflexive pronouns in IE must also have been neutral from the beginning: i.e., maybe *_me, *te_, etc. were always used as reflexives for the 1st and 2nd persons but *_se_ was recruited for this role in the 3rd person (where reflexiveness usually requires more careful marking than in the 1st/2nd persons).


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## learnerr

Gavril said:


> ... It's still not clear to me, though, why reflexive pronouns in IE must also have been neutral from the beginning ...


Before _ahvalj_ replies, I just wonder why this "neutrality" might be a problem, i.e. why some justification must have been employed by the speakers for such use?


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## ahvalj

Well, since the topic started with the Slavic example, I'll focus on the Russian situation. In Russian, the phrase "I like my job" can be rendered actually with both pronouns "ya lyublyu svoyu rabotu" and "ya lyublyu moyu rabotu", simply the personal variant in most cases will sound less natural. There are no reasons to state that the IE speakers were not allowed to use personal pronouns in this case (after all, since this usage is present to various extents everywhere, the starting point may have lied in the common ancestor), but the topic question was which variant was the neutral one. As the earliest attested IE languages seem to point to the Balto-Slavic variant, it is assumed since the ninetienth century that it was the original state of affairs.


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## Gavril

learnerr said:


> Before _ahvalj_ replies, I just wonder why this "neutrality" might be a problem, i.e. why some justification must have been present for such use?



Any reconstruction needs to be justified, and based on my present knowledge, there is at least a little bit more justification for reconstructing the reflexive pattern

*egHo/me (1sg.)
*tu/*te (2sg.)
*is/**se* (3sg.)
etc.

than there is for reconstructing the pattern that I called "neutral": i.e.,

*egHo/*se
*tu/*se
*is/*se
etc.

The reason why I would prefer the former reconstruction is that it is more widespread among the IE languages: thus far, the only branches I know that fail to display this pattern are Baltic and Slavic.

Is the second pattern more widespread than Baltic/Slavic? E.g., what is the situation in the Indo-Iranian languages?


(By the way, I used *is as the reconstruction of the 3sg. masc. nominative pronoun above because I've seen it used in some IE reconstructions, on the basis of e.g. Latin and Germanic, even though I know not everyone agrees  that there was a "default" 3sg. pronoun in IE to begin with.)


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## ahvalj

Gavril said:


> As far as I can tell, Meillet gives examples of the possessive adjective *_swos_ meaning "own" (as Beekes had done), and of other possible derivatives (e.g., Gothic _sidus_) that seem to reflect this meaning, but no examples outside Baltic or Slavic of the object pronoun *_se_ with the neutral meaning "self".


I am trying to collect the evidence, so will be updating this post. So far: Germanic, Latin and Greek don't use s- for the first and second persons. However, Vedic does. Yelizarenkova (Елизаренкова, 1982 «Грамматика ведийского языка») writes on p. 248: «[в] качестве возвратного местоимения в ведийском языке употребляется неизменяемая местоимённая форма svayám 'сам', 'самого себя', 'самим собой' и пр., соотносимая со всеми тремя лицами» and «[р]ефлексивное прилагательное svá- 'свой', также соотносимое с любым лицом» — "as a reflexive pronoun, the Vedic uses an invariable pronominal form svayám 'self', 'oneself', 'by oneself' etc. correlated with all the three persons" and "a reflexive adjective svá- 'self', also correlated with any person".

Update 1. Since Vedic has it, Avestan does as well. So far, examples only for the possessive. Again, from a Russian grammar («Основы иранского языкознания. Древнеиранские языки». 1979), page 190: "yim narǝm … sraēštǝm dādarǝsa xvahe gayehe" [Y.9.2] — «которого я увидел самого прекрасного в своей жизни» — "whom I saw as the most beautiful in my life" for the first person and "xvā aoǰaŋhā vasō. xšaθrō ahi" [Y.9.25] — «ты своей силой могуществен» — "you are powerful with your force" for the second.

Update 2. Hittite. I have the Russian translation of Friedrich's grammar of 1940, so I guess the interested people will be able to check the original. In the translation (Фридрих, 1952 «Краткая грамматика хеттского языка»), section 252 (pages 138–139) we find: «Наиболее употребительным средством выражения возвратности является частица -za (-z), которая, подобно славянскому возвратному местоимению, применяется по отношению ко всем лицам» — "The most common way to express the reflexivity is the particle -za (-z), which, like the Slavic reflexive pronoun, is applied to all persons".

Since we have the shared evidence from Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian and Anatolian, I think it is safe to assume that the question is closed.

Update 3. Kloekhorst, 2008 (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_7IkEzr9hyJUk95SHh4VEZIcU0/edit?usp=sharing), page 1019, however, derives -z(a) from the proto-Anatolian -*ti, so it must be unrelated to the form found in the other branches. Nevertheless, he states "In HLuwian, the form of the reflexive particle differs per person. We find =mi for the 1sg., =ti and =ri /=di/ for 2sg. and =ti, =ri /=di/ for 3sg. (the old reflexive particle from *=ti), The reflexives =mi and /=di/ are probably innovated on the basis of *=ti, combining the consonant of the enclitic pronouns =mu ‘me’ and =du ‘you’ with the -i of *=ti" — so in any case the original situation was the single reflexive particle for all persons.


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## ahvalj

"is" is in no way related to "se-" as -s is a Nom. Sg. ending. The stem is only i-, and it actually has thematic variants ("ios" meaning "which").


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> "is" is in no way related to "se-" as -s is a Nom. Sg. ending. The stem is only i-, and it actually has thematic variants ("ios" meaning "which").


Of course it's not. The pronouns in front of the slashes in Gavril's list are nominative personal pronouns to indicate the person. This _*is_ is a kind of place-holder for the missing 3rd person nominative pronoun:





Gavril said:


> (By the way, I used *is as the reconstruction of the 3sg. masc. nominative pronoun above because I've seen it used in some IE reconstructions, on the basis of e.g. Latin and Germanic, even though I know not everyone agrees that there was a "default" 3sg. pronoun in IE to begin with.)


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## ahvalj

berndf said:


> Of course it's not. The pronouns in front of the slashes in Gavril's list are nominative personal pronouns to indicate the person. This _*is_ is a kind of place-holder for the missing 3rd person nominative pronoun:


Sorry, I was replying to several posts at the same time, saw "egHom/me" instead of "egHo/me" and decided Gavril was proposing the pattern m/m t/t and s/s. Mea culpa.


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## Gavril

ahvalj said:


> Since we have the shared evidence from Balto-Slavic, Indo-Iranian and Anatolian, I think it is safe to assume that the question is closed.



I agree that this is compelling evidence that the widespread pattern of "concord" in reflexives -- *_egHo/*me, *tu/*te_ etc. -- is not the original one. But it isn't clear evidence that the pattern *_egHo/*se, *tu/*se_ etc. must be original either, since only Balto-Slavic seems to show this pattern. The Anatolian and I-Ir. reflexive constructions you mention are formally different from B-S and from one another, though they share the feature of being independent of the person/number of their antecedent.

Perhaps IE had no reflexive pronouns per se (<-- haha, "se" ), but different optional ways of expressing that a verb or other word had reflexive meaning.


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## Dib

Gavril said:


> ... The Anatolian and I-Ir. reflexive  constructions you mention are formally different from B-S and from one  another, though they share the feature of being independent of the  person/number of their antecedent.
> 
> Perhaps IE had no reflexive pronouns per se (<-- haha, "se" ), but different optional ways of expressing that a verb or other word had reflexive meaning.



Sounds like an interesting idea.

In fact the Vedic evidence is a little further away from B-S than  what would be apparent from the evidence, ahvalj gathered. It's true  that Vedic had a true reflexive adjective svá-, just like Russian  "свой", like he/she has mentioned. It could refer to any person. But the  reflexive pronoun svayám was apparently quite restricted - mostly  limited to the nominative case and occasionally accusative, and likely  no other case - I don't know why Yelizarenkova mentions "самим собой"  (instrumental). Quoting A.A.Macdonell from "A Vedic Grammar for  Students", p. 111:
"The reflexive indeclinable substantive *sva-y-ám* _self_  is properly used as a N[ominative] referring to all three persons.  Sometimes, however, its N[ominative] nature being forgotten, it is used  as an A[ccusative]."

The normal way of expressing oblique reflexive pronoun in earliest Vedic was an innovative use of the noun tanū́ _body_. So, to  say "Worship yourself", the expression was "Worship the body" /  "Worship your body" / "Worship your own body". In later Vedic and  classical Sanskrit, ātmán _soul_ came to be used instead. Apparently, they became more spiritual.


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## ahvalj

I have checked some 30 or 40 grammars and overviews, plus the web, looking for examples, but it seems that the authors were very little interested in the peculiarities of usage of the reflexive pronouns across the ancient IE languages. I have an impression that the opinion expressed by Meillet was the default point of view since very long ago, and all the attested deviations were silently interpreted as signs of decline of the original system. Yet, judging from the better preserved traces of the possessive swo- and the numerous derivatives (including swesor- and swek'ruH-) and the lack of evidence of a secondary levelling in Balto-Slavic and Indo-Iranian, the traditional point of view seems more justified. Anyway, all this could be a good theme for a dissertation.


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> However, in case of the reflexive verbs the usage is grammaticalized, i.e. normally it's incorrect to say e.g in Slovak  "_ja *ma *(pers. pronoun) myjem_" instead of "_ja *sa *(refl. pronoun) myjem_" (Spanish: _"yo *me *lavo", _lit._ "I wash *me*_", meaning "_I wash myself_").



I don't quite understand the Slovak system. You wrote in the first post: 
myjem sa - me lavo
myješ sa - te lavas
myje sa - se lava 

Why is it "myjem sa" but " ja ma myjem"?


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> I don't quite understand the Slovak system. You wrote in the first post:
> myjem sa - me lavo
> myješ sa - te lavas
> myje sa - se lava
> 
> Why is it "myjem sa" but " ja ma myjem"?


Only because without any context _myjem sa _and _ja sa myjem _is the "normal" word order.


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> Only because without any context _myjem sa _and _ja sa myjem _is the "normal" word order.


Sorry, I was not attentive enough reading the post first time. You wrote it was incorrect to say Ja ma myjem. The same system is used in Polish, and I think, in all Slavic languages.


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## berndf

ahvalj said:


> I suspect, a Germanic or Romance speaker does not fully feel the degree of abstraction the Slavic/Baltic/original IE reflexive forms express: they denote possession not tied to any person, so Russian "svoy/svoya/svoyo" is considerably more abstract than the etymologically related Spanish "suyo/suya".


To clarify the situation in German: The dative/accusative 1st/2nd person reflexive and personal pronouns are identical *in form* but this does not mean we don't differentiate between them *in concept*. In most cases it is clear by context which of the two is meant. There are a few verbs though, where both reflexive and non-reflexive meanings exist. E.g. _ärgern_ means _to cause anger_ as a transitive verb and _to feel anger_ as a reflexive verb. In this case, I cause anger to myself (i.e. an contingently and not a conceptually reflexive use) could not be distinguished from _I feel anger_. In this case we use the emphatic form of the reflexive pronoun (_mich selbst_) to indicate transitive use:_
Ich ärgere mich = I feel anger.
Ich ärgere mich selbst = I cause anger to myself._


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