The referential nature of the German reflexive pronoun sich in diachronic coverage

Burok Tat`yana E`dvartovna, Polenova Galina Tikhonovna

The article deals with the German reflexive pronoun sich from the point of view of the historical change of its reference. The authors consider the German pronoun sich to be a structural element of German syntax, coreferential to the subject, an anaphora referring to the subject-agent. It is established that it functioned as an antecedent of the agent, first of all, with verbs expressing the mental state of the subject. These verbs competed in Old German with medial forms, conveying a combination of centrifugal with centripetal. The construction with a reflexive pronoun turned the transitive forms of the verb into intransitive ones, changing the reference from object to subject.

Keywords:reference, reflexive verbs, reflexive pronoun, diachrony, subject, agent, anaphora.