What is a reflexive verb?
a reflexive verb is a verb whose semantic agent and patient (typically represented syntactically by the subject and the direct object) are the same. For example, the English verb to perjure is reflexive, since one can only perjure oneself. In a wider sense, it refers to any verb form whose grammatical object is a reflexive pronoun, regardless of semantics; such verbs are also referred to as pronominal verbs, especially in grammars of the Romance languages. There are languages that have explicit morphology to transform a verb into a reflexive form. English employs reflexive derivation idiosyncratically, as in “self-destruct”; Romance languages do the same with the Greek-derived prefix auto-. 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.
I have never heard of a reflexive verb in English. There are reflexive pronouns. They reflect back on the last noun. For example. Bobby hit himself. Himself is a reflexive pronoun. I think there might be reflexive verbs in German or Spanish. In German, a person might say, “setzen Sie” which means, “sit yourself down.” In Spanish, it would be “siente se,” which also means “sit yourself down.
