A Comparative Study of Reflexive Forms in Three Northern Athapaskan Languages

In this paper I will describe the reflexive forms found in three Athapaskan languages of northern Canada: Chipewyan, Dogrib, and Slave. Reflexive morphology in these languages has different properties depending on whether the reflexive form serves as the object of a verb or postposition, or as the p...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Saxon, Leslie
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Atlantic Provinces Linguistic Association 1985
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Online Access:https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/la/article/view/32419
Description
Summary:In this paper I will describe the reflexive forms found in three Athapaskan languages of northern Canada: Chipewyan, Dogrib, and Slave. Reflexive morphology in these languages has different properties depending on whether the reflexive form serves as the object of a verb or postposition, or as the possessor of a noun. My focus in this paper is on the reflexive possessive forms. I show that different properties of reflexive forms in a single language are mirrored by different properties among the three languages. Cross-linguistic evidence thus provides additional support for distinctions set up on the basis of facts particular to one language, in this case, distinctions between possessive and non-possessive uses of the reflexive form.