From Reflexive to Passive

Abstract

Previous approaches to the passive development from a reflexive marking focus on how the former is similar to the latter semantically and syntactically. I show that the passive evolution is better understood by looking at the internal procedures that the reflexive undergoes on the way to the passive. This approach clearly recognizes that reflexive clauses with agent subjects are highly resistant to the passive interpretation, for example. A reflexive marking tends to acquire a canonical passive function when it loses the true reflexive use, and morphologically, when it becomes an affix.