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This introductory chapter presents the main thesis adopted in this book: there are no grammatical rules that are specifically designed to account for the distribution of anaphors and pronouns in the grammar. Instead, the syntax of simplex and complex reflexives are related to that of constructions that share morphological and distributional properties with them. Anaphoricity is derived by the syntactic mechanism of Agree. This chapter also contains an outline of the rest of the chapters, which serves as a roadmap for the book.

This chapter extends the analysis. The first extension is to reflexives contained in PPs, which pose a problem for the syntactic analysis developed in Chapters 3 and 4. It is argued that PPs come in two kinds: functional ones and spatial/temporal ones. These occupy different configurational positions in the tree. Both types of PPs show different behaviour with regard to binding of anaphors and pronouns contained in them, due to their different configurational position in the tree. The second issue is that of nonlocal reflexives. These constitute a more recalcitrant problem, left as a matter for further research. Finally, the consequences of the analysis for simplex and complex reflexives in other languages are evaluated. It is argued that French, Italian, German, and Swedish se reflexives are morphologically complex, and can figure in both the configurations of simplex zich and complex zichzelf in Dutch.

This chapter tackles the syntax of self-reflexives. Such reflexives are derived from pronouns by adjoining a self-part to them, which provides them with the syntax of floating quantifiers. This claim is developed in two steps: first, it is shown that self-reflexives share a number of properties with intensifiers (e.g., The headmaster has seen me himself). Second, it is argued that the syntax of such intensifiers closely matches that of floating quantifiers. Finally, the syntax of self-reflexives is shown to be reducible to the syntax of floating quantifiers. Floating quantifiers must c-command its antecedent. So do self-reflexives: they overtly or covertly raise to an adjoined position from which they c-command their antecedents. As probes, they value their φ-features via an Agree relation with the antecedent they c-command. An account is developed for the logophoric uses of self-reflexives.

This chapter is concerned with the semantics of simplex and complex reflexives. It argues that simple reflexive zich represents a spatiotemporal stage of its antecedent. The notion of temporal stage is couched in terms of the I-Subject/Concept terminology introduced by Coppieters (1982) and Bouchard (1995). The theoretical relevance of spatiotemporal stages is illustrated by a fine-grained analysis of reflexive-inchoative verbs that feature zich with inanimate subjects. The peculiar Binding properties of psych verbs can be explained in terms of this semantic notion. As for the semantics of complex reflexives, they are able to occur in dissociation contexts, unlike simplex reflexives. These semantic properties are related to the specific syntax of both kinds of elements.