Edited by Leonid Kulikov and Nikolaos Lavidas
[Benjamins Current Topics 75] 2015
► pp. 7–27
Starting from the analysis of constructions employed to express the category of reflexive in Hittite, encoded both by the verbal ending set of the middle and by the pronominal marker -za with both active and middle verbal forms, we present a typological parallelism with the Baltic languages that has consistently developed, from a pronominal, a verbal strategy to mark reflexivity. It is also shown that a development regarding the ways of encoding reflexivity involve other Indo-European languages as well.
The Anatolian languages attest the reflexes of the original set of endings referring to the semantic categories of Reflexive, Middle and “Resultative”, while the other Indo-European languages attest an innovated “mixed morphology” for the category of Middle and Reflexive as opposed to the proper endings of the historical perfect. Within such a theoretical framework, the development of alternative strategies, using pronominal devices or particles, aims to disambiguate a wide polysemous ending set. A ‘Wackernagel’ (2P) particle in Hittite, namely -z, is particularly active in disambiguating reflexivity. Lithuanian -si, an original pronoun that developed at first into a 2P particle and subsequently into a verbal suffix, extends its functional field and takes over the place of the original middle, as in other Baltic and Slavonic languages.