Postma (1997) observes that dyadic constructions with a verb of physical disruption such as brekento break in (209) can have two different interpretations. Example (209a) is a run-of-the-mill transitive construction with an agentive subject, which is clear from the fact that it allows passivization. Example (209b), on the other hand, is an inalienable possession construction, which differs from the transitive construction (209a) in at least two ways: (i) the subject of the clause is not agentive but functions as the possessor of the noun phrase zijn arm; (ii) the construction cannot be passivized without losing its inalienable possession meaning.

Some care is needed here, because binding of a derived subject by the agent in passive constructions is usually marked. It is not completely impossible, and can in fact be forced by the addition of the emphasizer zelf, as in zijni arm is door Jani zelf gebroken his arm was broken by Jan himself, which crucially can only receive the causative reading found in the (a)-examples. That the argument is somewhat problematic is mainly due to the peculiarity of standard Dutch that it normally uses a possessive pronoun as the determiner of the possessum in an inalienable possession construction; Dutch dialects that use a definite article instead show the same behavior as illustrated in (209b-b'); cf. Scholten (2018:§4.4) for examples and discussion. This shows that the argument is valid at least for these dialects.

Postma shows that interpretation also affects the choice between simplex and complex reflexive pronouns in object position. This is illustrated by the examples in (210) with the verb of bodily harm bezerento hurt. We have again added an adverbial phrase to these examples in order to clarify the two interpretations of the subject: the agentive reading is compatible with an instrumental met-PP, while the inalienable possession reading favors a (non-instrumental) aan-PP referring to the object that has inflicted the bodily harm; cf. also the contrast between the two examples in (202).

The primed examples suggest that the complex reflexive zichzelf is used in the regular transitive construction, while the simplex reflexive zich is used in the inalienable possession construction. Postma concludes that zich in (210b') has the same function as the noun phrase zijn arm in (210b), i.e. it functions as the possessum in an inalienable possession construction. More specifically, Postma claims that zijn armhis arm and zich differ in that the former refers to a part of the possessor while the latter refers to the possessor as a whole. Note in passing that Postma’s conclusion runs counter to the suggestion in Reuland (2011:§6.5.3.2) that inalienable possession constructions “could provide a model for complex reflexives” such as zichzelf, in the sense that the body part has a similar function as the zelf-morpheme; in what follows we will adopt Postma’s conclusion.

Assuming that zich functions as a possessum in an inalienable possession construction, one might expect that all inalienable possession constructions have a reflexive counterpart. This subsection will show that this expectation is not justified: it can be accounted for by appealing to specific semantic differences between the verbs involved.

The two subsections above argue that the semantic function of the simplex reflexive in a reflexive verb construction is similar to that of the possessum in an inalienable possession construction. This means that the properties attributed to simplex reflexives, repeated here as (218), should also hold for the possessum in an inalienable possession construction.

More generally, the unaccusative syntax of inalienable possession constructions is supported by the fact that such constructions cannot be passivized, as was already shown in the (b)-examples in (209) and (214); cf. Section V3.2.1 for a detailed discussion. That the possessum is assigned (i.e. “absorbs”) accusative case is clear from the German inalienable possession constructions in (219); cf. Rooryck and Vanden Wyngaerd (2011:73).

Property (218a), which states that simplex reflexives are not assigned a θ-role by the verb, follows from their use as possessums. It can be supported by the fact that possessums and their inalienable possessors in general constitute semantic units (Lee-Schoenfeld 2006:§1.1). This becomes particularly clear when comparing the non-standard construction in (220a), in which the possessor appears as a dative phrase, with its standard Dutch counterpart in (220b), but we can assume that the same holds for nominative possessors.

The standard Dutch example in (220b) shows that the verb wassento wash selects a single internal (theme) argument, and it would therefore be undesirable to assume that the corresponding nonstandard form selects two internal arguments: a theme and a possessor. Broekhuis & Cornips (1997) therefore proposed that the dative possessor and the possessum are inserted into the structure as a single constituent, which we label S(mall) C(clause) in (221a). This results in a structure similar to that in (221b) for prepositional indirect object constructions in Den Dikken (1995); cf. Section V3.3.1. The “PØ” in (221a) stands for a phonetically empty preposition, and the number sign “#” indicates that the structure is not acceptable as a surface form, for reasons that will become clear shortly.

Structure (221a) solves the problem regarding the selection restrictions of the verb wassento wash, as we can now assume that this verb always selects a single internal argument: the NP zijn handen in (220a) and the small clause [de handen [PØ hem]] in (221a). The licensing of the two noun phrases in the small clause is independent of the verb: the pronoun hem is semantically licensed as the internal argument of the empty preposition P, and the resulting PP [PØ hem] functions as a predicate taking the noun phrase de handen as its external argument. The external argument of the small clause is of course formally licensed by being assigned case by the transitive verb wassen.

For the discussion that follows in Subsection III, the reader need only be willing to accept that the inalienable possessor and possessum form some kind of semantic unit that is licensed as a whole by the verb. For completeness, however, we will now show how the surface order in (220a) can be derived. The analysis is based on the assumption that the empty preposition PØ must be supported by some phonological material, which can be obtained by incorporating it into the verb. Broekhuis & Cornips (1997) argue for the derivation in the (a)-examples in (222) on the basis of various empirical facts; the derivation closely follows Den Dikken’s (1995) analysis of the double object construction in the (b)-examples, which also involves the phonetically empty PØ (instead of the overt preposition aan in (221b)). Note that incorporation of PØ requires that the small-clause predicate be moved into some higher functional projection (FP) in order to get “close enough” to the main verb to license the subsequent movement of PØ into V; cf. the primed examples in which tP is the trace of the incorporated PØ. The resulting complex verb V+PØ is able to assign dative case to the indirect object.

The inalienable possession and reflexive verb constructions under discussion receive a roughly similar derivation as example (220a); the main difference is that the complex verb V+ PØ is not able to assign dative case to the possessor, which therefore has to be moved into the subject position of the clause in order to be assigned nominative case. We illustrate this in (223) with Jan bezeert zich/zijn voetJan has hurt himself/his foot. The m-dash is used to indicate that the verb does not take an external argument; the subject position of the clause is therefore available for the possessor Jan.

We refer the reader to Broekhuis (2022) for a more detailed discussion of the derivations involved, and to Rooryck and Vanden Wyngaerd (2011:§3) for a slightly different implementation of the same general idea.

This section has presented the outlines of a formal analysis of reflexive verb constructions that derives the properties of the simplex reflexives repeated in (224), according to which the reflexive and its antecedent begin as subparts of a small clause expressing inalienable possession: since the simplex reflexive functions as the logical subject of the small clause, it is assigned accusative case but no thematic role by the verb (which selects the small clause as a whole), while the possessor must be promoted to subject in order to be assigned nominative case.

The analysis is based on Postma’s insight that inalienable possession and reflexive verb constructions should be unified. This section has presented syntactic arguments for this unification. A broader set of (sometimes problematic) arguments of a more semantic nature can be found in Rooryck & Vanden Wyngaerd (2011:§3.2).

The easiest cases to account for are those in which a simplex reflexive functions as the logical subject of a small clause; consider the examples in (227a-c), repeated from Section 23.4.1. The fact that the subject of the small clause can be assigned accusative case by the main verb can be taken as an argument for assuming that the PP-predicate is sufficiently close to that verb for P-incorporation to be licensed. Of course, essentially the same holds for the subjects of infinitival complements in AcI-constructions, since these complements can be seen as verbal small clauses; cf. (227d). This accounts for the acceptability of the use of zich.

The fact that the simplex reflexive regularly alternates with the complex reflexive zichzelf and/or the reciprocal elkaar follows from the fact that regular noun phrases can also function as subjects of the small clauses; cf. Zij wierpen Jan voor de trein They threw Jan in front of the train. We thus predict that both simplex and complex reflexives can normally be used as logical subjects of small clauses, and that the more special cases in which they do not alternate should be accounted for by an appeal to non-syntactic factors, as already suggested in Section 23.4.1, sub III.

The analysis of simplex reflexives as possessums in inalienable possession constructions along the lines sketched in (225) is applicable to a wider range than just reflexive verb constructions. This was first noted in Postma (1997), who shows that the subject Marie can be interpreted both as the inalienable possessor of haar voetenher feet and as the antecedent of the se-reflexive zich.

Examples like (228a&b) are regularly analyzed as prepositional small clause constructions. Section 23.4.1, sub I, has shown on the basis of the examples in (229) that such constructions differ from their adjectival and nominal counterparts in that only they allow the use of a simplex reflexive as the complement of the predicative part of the construction. On the assumption that simplex reflexives are anaphors, this leads to the unnatural claim that the adjectival and nominal small clauses in (229b-c) differ from prepositional small clauses in that the former, but not the latter, constitute an anaphoric domain in which the se-reflexive in complement position must be bound; cf. Table (180).

The pattern in (229) is more easily understood on the hypothesis that simplex reflexives are possessums in inalienable possession constructions: complements of adjectival and nominal small clauses differ from those of prepositional small clauses in that they cannot participate in inalienable possession relations. We can therefore assume that the simplex reflexive and its antecedent are introduced as parts of a small clause in the complement position of the prepositional small clause in (228b)/(229a), in the way indicated in (225a). The derivation proceeds by extracting [PP PØ NP] from the prepositional small clause in the way indicated in (225b); after incorporation of the empty preposition into the verb, as in (225c), the antecedent is promoted to subject to be assigned nominative case. Broekhuis & Cornips (1997) proposed a similar analysis for inalienable possession constructions such as (230) with a dative possessor for independent reasons; cf. V3.3.1.4, sub IV, for relevant discussion. The main difference between the examples in (228)/(229a) and (230) is that, for as yet unclear reasons, the possessor is assigned nominative case in (228)/(229a) but dative case in (230).

The argument given here crucially relies on the assumption that the analysis proposed in Broekhuis & Cornips (1997) for possessive dative constructions can be extended to possessive nominative constructions, but see Section V3.3.1.4, sub VI, for some arguments that may call this assumption into question. We leave this issue for future research.

This subsection discusses the distribution of the simplex reflexive zich embedded in bare infinitival complements of AcI-constructions. A long-standing problem for approaches that treat simplex reflexives as anaphors is illustrated in (231): because simplex reflexives usually have a similar distribution as clause-bound referential pronouns, the contrast in acceptability between the two occurrences of zich in these sentences is unexpected.

Our account of this contrast will be based on the hypothesis put forward in Petter (1998:§4) that, contrary to what is usually assumed, the causative construction in (231b) is actually not an AcI-construction but a double object construction: Jan is not the subject of the verbal small clause, but a direct object of the matrix verb laten, as in (232).

As Section V5.2.3.4 provides a more detailed discussion of this hypothesis, we will limit ourselves to providing just one argument in its favor, which is directly related to our present topic. If the reflexives in (233) were analyzed as subjects of an infinitival clause, we would expect them to appear in both a complex and a simplex form; cf. Subsection A The prediction is correct for constructions with perception verbs, but not for those with causative laten; cf. Everaert (1986:§5.4.2).

The contrast between the primeless and primed examples follows immediately when the latter are double object constructions, since example (166b) has shown that indirect objects do not normally appear as simplex reflexives. Example (234) shows that zich becomes possible if we replace the verb zwemmen in (233a') by the unaccusative verb vallento fall; cf. (234). This follows from the fact that in this case zich can only be analyzed as the (obligatory) internal theme argument of vallen and not as the indirect object of laten. Note that (234) also shows that the indirect object of laten is not always expressed.

The discussion is structured as follows. Subsection 1 deals with cases such as (231), in which zich is a nominal or prepositional complement of the infinitival verb. This is followed in Subsection 2 by a discussion of cases in which zich is embedded in a prepositional small clause. Unfortunately, the discussion is complicated by the fact that reliable judgments on the relevant data are sometimes difficult to obtain. For example, Reuland (2011:292) considers examples similar to (231a) with a referential pronoun bound by the matrix subject as marked or even unacceptable, while Everaert (1986:278) considers them fully acceptable. Everaert’s position seems to be supported by a quotation from De zesde mei (2003: ch.2) by the Dutch writer Tomas Ross: Ze zegt: “Dag Bob”, en ze hoort hem haar teruggroeten [...] She says, “Hello Bob,” and she hears him greet her back [...]. Internet data will be used to shed new light on conflicting judgments we will encounter later.

As a rule, adverbial PPs cannot take a simplex reflexive as their complement. Some examples of different kinds are given in (246).

Adverbial PPs differ in this respect from predicative PPs in small clause constructions; cf. Subsection B. Example (247) shows again that the complement of the prepositional head of the small clause can be a simplex (but not a complex) reflexive when it refers to the subject of the clause.

Now consider (248). Although this example also involves a locational PP, it is generally not analyzed as a small clause construction, but as a construction involving the adverbial PP voor/achter/naast zich. The reason for this is that the PP does not seem to be predicative in nature, and there is no (understood) theme argument located in the place referred to by the PP. If this is correct, it shows that certain adverbial locational PPs are special in that they allow a simplex reflexive as their complement.

Other possible examples of this kind are given in (249). That the PPs in these examples are adverbial may be motivated by the fact that they are optional (but see the discussion below example (251)). For the sake of the argument, we will assume that these are indeed adverbial PPs.

It is not clear how widespread the distribution of adverbial PPs of the form P + zich really is. Rooryck & Vanden Wyngaerd (2011:156) claim that the adverbial PP can also be temporal, but the only example they provide, given here in (250), may in fact involve a temporal small clause predicate; the PP seems virtually obligatory and locates the theme, niemand, in a specific temporal interval following the presidency of the person referred to by the subject. The example is also somewhat peculiar in that dulden usually selects a locational PP when the object refers to a person, as is clear from the paraphrase of this verb given in the Van Dale dictionary: het bijzijn verdragen vanto endure the presence of; cf. Jan duldde niemand naast zichJan did not tolerate anyone beside him. This suggests that (250) involves a temporal application of the locational meaning of dulden. Since we are not aware of any other clear cases of temporal adverbial PPs in the literature, it seems justified to say that the phenomenon is restricted to locational adverbial PPs.

Constructions with an adverbial PP of the form P + zich are also limited in that they can only modify a small number of verbs. In fact, the examples given above seem to exhaust the possibilities: the construction is confined to the perception verbs ziento see, horento hear, and kijkento look (the more agentive counterpart of zien). Because the acceptability of cases like (248) and (249) is a long-standing problem that has not yet received a principled explanation in the literature, it is tempting to assume that they are idiomatic in nature. If so, this would lead to the conclusion that simplex reflexives can only occur as complements of small clause-PPs.

However, there are at least two reasons to be skeptical about the idea that the expressions in (248) and (249) are idiomatic in nature. First, they differ from the idiomatic collocation of P + zich in (251), taken from Everaert (1986:68) and Rooryck & Vanden Wyngaerd (2011:155). Everaert notes that these cases are peculiar in that zich is stressed and can be replaced by zichzelf (which can be easily confirmed by a cursory inspection of internet data), and he therefore suggests that we may be dealing with more recent borrowings from German, where the simplex form sich can function as a regular (reflexive or reciprocal) anaphor. Note in passing that (251c) is peculiar in that the PP op zich seems to require the presence of a negative phrase (here: nietsnothing).

Second, declaring (248) and (249) to be idiomatic is less attractive because their translations in other Germanic languages also exhibit special behavior: see the Norwegian and English counterparts of (248b) in (252) from Lødrup (2007:185) and Chomsky (1981:290), with seg/him instead of a complex reflexive.

That the cases in (248) and (249) involve locational PPs is not surprising, since we have seen in Subsection B that these typically host inalienably possessed phrases (including se-reflexives). One possibility, therefore, would be to analyze the PPs in (249) as SC-predicates. We have seen that this is usually not done because the PPs in these examples are optional, but we should be aware that unambiguous SC-predicates can sometimes also be omitted if the resulting sentence is interpretable (Hoekstra et al. 1987); cf. Jan veegde de stoep (schoon)Jan swept the pavement (clean) versus Jan veegde de bezem *(aan flarden)lit.: Jan swept the broom *(to shreds). A semantic argument for a SC-analysis of (249) could be built on the meaning of these examples. Examples such as Jan zag een slang in de tuinJohn saw a snake in the garden are ambiguous. On the first reading, the full event of Jan seeing a snake can be located in the garden; this should be expressed by an ordinary adverbial analysis of the PP. On the second reading, the location of the full event may be undetermined, in that Jan need not be in the garden, but may simply observe (e.g. from the kitchen) that there is a snake in the garden. The second reading with the PP having a more limited scope is the one also found in (249) and can be ascribed a standard (but non-resultative) SC-structure; cf. Jan zag [SC een slang in de tuin]. If so, the examples in (249) can be analyzed in a similar way to the cases discussed in Subsection B.

This leaves us with example (248), for which a SC-analysis seems less plausible because there is no syntactic object. Many dictionaries (e.g. Webster and Van Dale) paraphrase the meaning of to look (at) and kijken (naar) as “to direct one's eyes/attention + PP”, i.e. as a transitive construction with a predicative locational PP. It is therefore not surprising that kijken naar is listed as a verb with a PP-complement in all major Dutch grammars; cf. also Lødrup (2007) on Norwegian. Since Dutch naar is typically used in predicative (directional) PPs, it seems but a small step to assume that we are dealing with a SC-construction with an idiomatically determined empty logical subject.

Although it seems too early to draw definitive conclusions about the syntactic structure of the examples in (248) and (249), we can conclude that there are grounds for not analyzing the locational PPs as adverbial phrases, which opens the way for analyzing these cases along the lines indicated in this section.