Reflexives and Reflexivity

This article provides an overview of the various means that languages use to
represent interpretive dependencies and reflexive predicates. These means
are exemplified on the basis of a broad variety of languages. The patterns
are prima facie complex, involving semireflexives, full reflexives, and affixal
reflexives. Yet they can be accounted for on the basis of the morphosyntactic
properties of the elements involved, together with the way these elements
interact with a number of universal principles and the syntactic environment.
The central principles involved are (a) a principle restricting chain formation
by Agree and (b) a general principle applying to reflexive predicates that
requires them to be licensed, either through the addition of structural complexity
for protection or through a lexical bundling operation, governed by
(c) an economy principle. Although I conclude that there is no unified notion
of what a reflexive is, reflexives do have a shared core, namely their role in
the licensing of reflexivity.