ReflexiveverbIngrammar,areflexiveverbisaverbwhosesemanticagentandpatient(typicallyrepresentedsyntacticallybythesubjectandthedirectobject)arethesame
Forexample,theEnglishverbtoperjureisreflexive,sinceonecanonlyperjureoneself
Inawidersense,thephrasereferstoanyverbformwhosegrammaticalobjectisareflexivepronoun,regardlessofsemantics;suchverbsarealsoreferredtoaspronominalverbs,especiallyingrammarsoftheRomancelanguages
Therearelanguagesthathaveexplicitmorphologytotransformaverbintoareflexiveform
Englishemploysreflexivederivationidiosyncratically,asin"self-destruct";RomancelanguagesdothesamewiththeGreek-derivedprefixauto-
Inmanylanguages,reflexiveconstructionsarerenderedbytransitiveverbsfollowedbyareflexivepronoun,asinEnglish-self(e
,"Shethrewherselftothefloor
")及物動詞+反身代名詞(反身動詞reflexiveverbs)(注意