Are Reflexive Constructions Transitive or Intransitive? Evidence from German and Romance

Despite the substantial literature dedicated to it, the status of the reflexive is still controversial. Among others, the question whether reflexive constructions are transitive or intransitive, and if intransitive, whether they are unaccusative or unergative, has been intensively investigated. In this paper, we discuss this issue with data from German and Romance. We argue against the intransitivity hypothesis, showing that the reflexive behaves like a direct object. We implement the transitivity hypothesis in LMT, explaining why some reflexivized verbs behave like unaccusatives, while others show unergative-like behavior.