The morphosyntax of reflexives: A case study of Kannada
Abstract (summary)
Kannada, a Dravidian language spoken in South India, has two ways of expressing reflexivity, a reflexive pronoun and the verbal reflexive morpheme. This thesis investigates morphosyntactic restrictions of the two. A reflexive pronoun is generally assumed to have a grammatical subject as a potential binder identified with the DP in spec-TP. Through an investigation of binding behaviour of DPs in dative subject constructions, I argue that a DP in spec-VP can also be a potential binder. Regarding the verbal reflexive morpheme, it is observed that it can also appear in inchoatives. To account for this dual nature of the verbal reflexive morpheme, I argue that a particular type of v, a causative v, is needed for the realization of the verbal reflexive morpheme. I further examine verbal reflexive morphemes in other languages and claim that verbal reflexive morphemes can be subject to different morphosyntactic restrictions cross-linguistically.