The form of reflexive personal pronouns is determined by their antecedent: they vary according to the person and number features involved, just like the referential personal pronouns. However, they differ from referential pronouns in that they are not marked for gender: the third-person reflexive pronoun zich(zelf) can be used with masculine, feminine and neuter antecedents. The Dutch reflexive pronouns can be further divided into two morphologically distinct groups: the first group consists of monomorphemic forms, while the second group consists of bimorphemic forms that result from the addition of the bound morpheme -zelf to the monomorphemic forms. We will refer to these two groups as simplex and complex reflexives, respectively. The full paradigm is given in Table 11.

		singular		plural
		simplex	complex	simplex	complex
1st person		me	mezelf	ons	onszelf
2nd person	regular	je	jezelf	je	jezelf
	honorific	u/zich	uzelf/zichzelf	u/zich	uzelf/zichzelf
3rd person		zich	zichzelf	zich	zichzelf

The simplex reflexive pronouns are prototypically used in inherently reflexive contexts such as Marie vergist zichMarie was mistaken, although they can also be used in some other syntactic environments; cf. Section 23.4 for a detailed description. The first-person and second-person forms are homophonous with the weak object forms of the corresponding referential pronouns in Table 7, if available, although the second-person plural reflexive pronoun differs from the referential one in that it usually appears in the phonologically weak form je instead of the heavy form jullie. This is illustrated by the examples in (431).

Example (432a) shows that the honorific reflexive form can be either u(zelf) or zich(zelf). Section 19.2.1.1, sub I, has shown that the referential personal pronoun u behaves syntactically like a third-person singular pronoun; although it refers to one or more addressees, it triggers third-person singular agreement on the finite verb. The fact that the referential personal pronoun u can be the antecedent of the reflexive zich(zelf) merely shows that it also behaves like a third-person pronoun in this respect. Although the reflexive forms u and zich are often interchangeable, as in (432a), the use of the reflexive form u leads to a marked result when the subject pronoun and the reflexive pronoun are adjacent, as in (432b&c).

In imperative constructions such as (433) zich is excluded. This cannot be entirely attributed to the absence of the subject pronoun, given that the imperative is second person by nature; since zich is used only in the polite form, this should in principle be sufficient to indicate that the polite form is intended.

When the antecedent of the reflexive pronoun is plural, there are often two possible interpretations. Example (434), for instance, can refer either to a situation in which the boys present themselves as a group (e.g. We are The Tramps), or to a situation in which each of the boys introduces himself (e.g. A: I am Jan. B: And I am Peter). These readings depend on the interpretation of the plural subject, which can have either a collective or a distributive reading; cf. Section 19.1.1.4. Note that italics are used to indicate coreference.

Although this is not so clear from example (434), Reuland (2011:234) claims that the simplex reflexive zich is more likely to receive a strictly collective reading. He motivates this by pointing to examples such as (435) in a situation where the soldiers are defending a strategic position: both examples can be interpreted as a case of the soldiers maintaining their position, but Reuland claims that the example with zichzelf (but not with zich) also implies that there were no casualties, i.e. that each of the soldiers successfully defended himself.

Reuland attributes this difference in interpretation to the zelf-morpheme, which he analyzes as “distributor”, but one could also consider the possibility of attributing it to the fact that (435a) is a regular transitive construction (cf. De soldaten verdedigden de heuvel met succesthe soldiers successfully defended the hill), whereas (435b) would normally be analyzed as a reflexive verb construction. Since we are not sure whether the supposed difference in interpretation (i.e. distributive versus collective) is found systematically in other minimal pairs with zich and zichzelf, we leave this question open pending future research.

The reflexive counterpart of the generic personal pronoun men is the third-person form zich(zelf). The reflexive counterparts of the generic personal pronouns je and ze are je(zelf) and zich(zelf). Some examples are given in (436); cf. Section 19.2.1.1, sub I, for a discussion of these generic pronouns.

Occasionally, the form ’mzelf is used as a (kind of) reflexive pronoun within noun phrases, which can only occur if the clause contains a suitable antecedent; cf. the contrast between (437a) and (437b). However, example (437c) shows that ’mzelf differs from zichzelf in that the antecedent cannot be too close.

The distribution of ʼmzelf, which is quite restricted, has not been studied in much detail and will therefore not be discussed in the comprehensive review of the syntactic distribution of reflexive pronouns in Chapter 23; we refer the reader to Section 16.2.5.2 and Koster (1987:344ff) for some additional observations.

Dutch has only one reciprocal pronoun, which is used for all persons and genders. The form of this pronoun is usually elkaar, although in some varieties/registers of Dutch the forms mekaar and elkander (lit: each other) are also used. In general, the reciprocal pronoun is used with a syntactically plural antecedent, i.e. an antecedent that triggers plural agreement on the finite verb; this is illustrated in (438a-c). Note that sometimes the antecedent need not be expressed phonetically, as in the imperative example in (438d).

There are, however, exceptions to the general rule that the antecedent must be syntactically plural. For instance, the examples in (439) show that the generic indefinite/generic pronouns men and je can also act as antecedents of a reciprocal pronoun, despite the fact that they are syntactically singular (as is clear from the number marking on the finite verb).

Furthermore, example (440a) shows that collective nouns such as stelcouple can sometimes be used as antecedents for elkaar. However, this is not a general property of collective nouns, as will be clear from the markedness of (440b). The judgments are subtle, however, and seem to vary somewhat from person to person and case to case.

Other possible cases with a singular antecedent of elkaar are given in (441). However, it is not so clear whether the subject really acts as an antecedent of the reciprocal, since expressions like uit elkaar gaanto disperse/divorce, uit elkaar vallento fall apart, and in elkaar vallen/zakkento collapse have an idiomatic flavor. One possible reason for claiming that we are dealing with idioms is that the reciprocal meaning is missing in these examples, which might also explain why the sequence P + elkaar can often be replaced by P + één, i.e. uiteen in the (a)-examples and ineen in the (b)-examples. However, the discussion below will show that the reciprocity meaning can also be absent in certain non-idiomatic examples.

That reciprocity is an important ingredient of the meaning of the pronoun elkaar is clear from the following experiment. If we invent a new verb, say knurvento knurf, the first interpretation that will come to mind for a sentence like Jan en Marie knurven elkaarJan and Marie are knurving each other is that it implies that both “Jan is knurving Marie” and “Marie is knurving Jan” are true; similarly, a sentence like De jongens knurven elkaarThe boys are knurving each other will be taken to imply that each of the boys is knurving the others.

However, it seems that the reciprocity meaning may be absent when we are dealing with asymmetric predicates. Examples of such predicates can be found in clauses containing locational or temporal phrases such as to sit in front of: if Jan is sitting in front of Marie, it immediately follows that Marie is not sitting in front of Jan. The examples in (442) show that elkaar can still be used with such predicates.

The constructions in (442) are idiomatic in the sense that the antonyms of the prepositions cannot be used for no obvious reason: achter in (442a) cannot be replaced by voorin front of, although this would express the same logical relation; onderbeneath and voorbefore as antonyms of boven and na are also impossible in (442b&c). There are more poorly understood restrictions on constructions like (442), since the apparently similar constructions in (443) yield unacceptable results. Perhaps the difference in acceptability between (442) and (443) is due to the fact that in the latter case the intended relation can simply be expressed by the symmetric preposition naastnext-to, whereas Dutch has no symmetric prepositions that could express the intended relations in (442).

To our knowledge, the contrast between the constructions in (442) and (443) has not been systematically investigated, so we must leave this issue open. For a semantic description of such constructions, we refer to Reuland (2011:§6.4.2) and the references cited there.