Reflexives in Czech from a Dependency Perspective

Abstract

Reflexives are the source of ambiguity in many languages, including Czech. In this paper, we address Czech reflexives and their description in the dependency-oriented theory, Functional Generative Description. Our primary focus in this paper lies in the reflexives that form analogous syntactic structures as personal pronouns (e.g., Jan si / jí nevěří. 'John does not believe in himself / in her.'). In Czech (similarly as in other Slavic languages), these reflexives encode reflexivity or reciprocity, two closely related phenomena. We offer an in-depth analysis of both these phenomena and propose their description in lexicon and in grammar. Further, we clarify principles underlying ambiguity of reflexive and reciprocal constructions.

Derived lexical reciprocal verbs in Czech

“…With both syntactic and lexical reciprocals, this operation allows some of their semantic participants to be put into a perfect symmetry (for unequal involvement of participants in events with lexical reciprocals see Section 3.1). 6 As in other Slavic languages (Wiemer 2007;Ivanová 2020;Knjazev 2007b;Penchev 2007;Siloni 2008), reflexives in Czech serve as the primary marker of mutuality within both lexical and syntactic reciprocals, for Czech see (Panevová 1999;Panevová 2007;Panevová, Mikulová 2007;Kettnerová, Lopatková 2018;Kettnerová, Lopatková 2019). The reflexives function as part of reciprocal verb lemmas (the clitic reflexives se and si) or as the pronoun (the clitic se or si and the long forms sebe, sobě, and sebou), filling one of their valency positions.…”