There is also the non-clitic emphatic pronoun sebja/ себя, used to emphasize the reflexive nature of the act it is applicable only to 'true' reflexive verbs, where the agent performs a (transitive) action on itself. The enclitic reflexive pronoun sa/ se/ si/ się is used in Western and South Slavic languages, while Eastern Slavic languages use the suffix - sja (-ся). Full reflexive pronouns or pronominal phrases are added for emphasis or disambiguation: Me cuido a mí mismo 'I take care of myself' ( mismo combines with the prepositional form of the pronoun mí to form an intensive reflexive pronoun). In Spanish, for example, the particle se encliticizes to the verb's infinitive, gerund, and imperative ( lavarse 'to wash oneself'), while in Romanian, the particle procliticizes to the verb ( a se spăla 'to wash oneself').

In the Romance languages, there are nonemphatic clitic reflexive pronouns and emphatic ones. Romance and Slavic languages make extensive use of reflexive verbs and reflexive forms.

In many languages, reflexive constructions are rendered by transitive verbs followed by a reflexive pronoun, as in English -self (e.g., 'She threw herself to the floor.') English employs reflexive derivation in idiosyncratically, as in 'self-destruct'. There are languages that have explicit morphology or syntax to transform a verb into a reflexive form. The presence of the reflexive pronoun changes the meaning of a verb, e.g., Spanish abonar to pay, abonarse to subscribe. Other kinds of pronominal verbs are reciprocal ( they killed each other), passive ( it is told), subjective, and idiomatic. In a wider sense, the term refers to any verb form whose grammatical object is a reflexive pronoun, regardless of semantics such verbs are also more broadly referred to as pronominal verbs, especially in the grammar of the Romance languages. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself.

More generally, a reflexive verb has the same semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object). In grammar, a reflexive verb is, loosely, a verb whose direct object is the same as its subject, for example, 'I wash myself'.

What is a reflexive verb