ERGATIVE REFLEXIVES IN HEERLEN DUTCH AND FRENCH*

Abstract

Abstract. In this article it is shown that the Heerlen Dutch construction Her riet birigt zich‘the reed bends refl crucially differs from its Standard Dutch counterpart’. Instead, it has properties very similar to the ones of the French construction La branche se casse‘the branch refl breaks’. First, it is argued that both the Heerlen Dutch and the French constructions are ergative intransitive counterparts of transitive change of state verbs with a Causer as external argument. Secondly, it is shown that in the ergative constructions zich/se act as an aspectual marker, namely the aspectual focus is on the end‐point of the event. We will claim that this specific aspectual function of the reflexive element is not language specific but that it is a general property of ‘reflexive’ languages of both the ‘Roman’ and the ‘German’ type.

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