Ebook: Russian Reflexive Verbs: In Search of Unity in Diversity

Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi. 1990. — 322 pages. — (Studies in Slavic and General Linguistics)This book is concerned with the determination of the invariant meaning of the Russian 'reflexive' affix -sja, and the classification of its different types of usage.
Verbs with -sja are used in both personal and impersonal constructions. Impersonal -sja constructions are usually not dealt with separately: they are mentioned either in works on -sja, where the emphasis lies on personal constructions, or in works on impersonal constructions, where the emphasis lies on non-sja constructions.
In this book on -sja the main part (Part Two) is entirely dedicated to impersonal -sja constructions. However, in order to be able to say something about impersonal -sja constructions, it is necessary to first analyse personal -sja constructions. This will be the subject of Part One. The book concludes with a classificational scheme of the interpretational groups (both personal and impersonal).
The scheme given on page - vi- may be used as a scheme of reference throughout the book. The arrows represent the direction of what in section 3.1 below is called the "causal chain of events". The inner circles depict the increasing activity and the decreasing passivity of the subject of the personal constructions analysed in groups A through S (see section 3.4 and chapter 4), and the active or passive involvement of a second participant, referred to by an oblique object (see section 3.4 and the conclusion of Part One).
The majority of the examples given throughout the book have been excerpted from secondary sources such as dictionaries and studies by other linguists. The dictionaries used are the Slovar' russkogo jazyka, I-IV, 1981, edited by A.P. Evgen'eva (henceforth SRJ) and the Slovar' sovremennogo russkogo literatumogo jazyka, I-XVII, 1950-1965 (henceforth BAS). A number of examples are taken from primary literary sources: Vremja bol'six ozidanij by K. Paustovskij, Doktor Zivago by B. Pasternak and Moskva 2042 by V. Vojnovic. In addition to these, several examples were provided by my principal informant, Dr. A.M. Lubotsky, who is not only a native speaker of Russian but also a linguist. Examples which are not identified in terms of their reference sources have been composed by myself.