| The functional evolution of the reflexive pronoun is examined in three Indo-European language subgroups: Romance, Slavic, and Germanic. Most Romance and Slavic languages have not developed agentive reflexive-passives, while many Scandinavian languages have. This pattern is accounted for in terms of language type. Romance and Slavic languages have a personal-impersonal voice system, whereas, Germanic languages have an active-passive system. In personal-impersonal languages, agent-to-subject mapping is the primary constraint, while topic-to-subject mapping is the primary constraint in active-passive languages. Therefore, when both agent and patient are to be overtly expressed, the agent should be assigned to subject position in personal-impersonal languages. Thus, agentive reflexive-passives are rare in Romance and especially so in Slavic. Whereas, in active-passive languages, the patient can be assigned to the subject position relatively freely. In this situation, a demand for ability to express the agent will be high, bringing about an agentive passive.;The most natural trajectory of reflexive evolution is: Reflexive → Reciprocal → Inchoative → Impersonal → Passive. This progression is further elaborated. The semantic component of the reflexive that plays a crucial role in reflexive evolution is the absence of an external agent. Up to the inchoative stage, this semantic notion is persistent. When this notion extends to agentive verbs subcategorizing human subjects only, its most natural extension appears to be an impersonalness of the agent. The immediate extension of the absent agent notion to the passive will involve by nature a radical semantic and syntactic jump, because inchoative excludes external agents, but passive can imply a specific agent. The impersonal stage between inchoative and passive forms bridge that enables a natural transition.;The notion of impersonalness of the agent also accounts for why, in most European languages, there is a tendency for reflexive-passives/impersonals to occur in the imperfective aspect. Impersonalness of the agent matches non-completive actions more naturally. Completed events (i.e., perfective aspect) tend to imply a specific agent. |
