13.1. Reflexive
Models
| 1) | ȻENEṈISET SEN. | ‘I help myself.’ |
| 2) | ȻENEṈISET ȽTE. | ‘We help ourselves.’ |
| 3) | ȻENEṈISET SW̱. | ‘You help yourself.’ |
| 4) | ȻENEṈISET SW̱ HÁLE. | ‘You folks help yourselves.’ |
| 5) | ȻENEṈISET. | ‘He/she/they help/s himself/herself/themselves.’ |
‣ 1 Grammatical patterns that express the idea of one person acting on himself or herself are called reflexive sentences. In English, we have reflexive pronouns: myself, ourselves, yourself, yourselves, himself, herself, itself, and themselves.
‣ 2 In SENĆOŦEN there are no reflexive pronouns. There are actually several ways of expressing the idea of ‘self’ in SENĆOŦEN. This section introduces one way: a special suffix that goes on a verb. Other ways of expressing ‘self’ are covered in §35.2.
‣ 3 The form of the reflexive suffix is ‑SET and sometimes ‑SOT. The difference between these two variations is covered in §45.1.
‣ 4 Words with the ‑SET/‑SOT suffix do not always translate as ‘self.’ Some words with this suffix translate as ‘get’ or ‘become’. For example, when you add it to ĆEḴ ‘big,’ you get ĆEḴSOT ‘get big.’ This and other uses of this suffix are covered in §45.1.
‣ 5 Note that the reflexive suffix makes an intransitive verb, so the he/she/they form has an understood subject, just as any other intransitive verb (§1.1).
‣ 6 Because there are several ways of expressing ‘self’ in SENĆOŦEN, the ‑SET/‑SOT suffix is not nearly as common as ‘self’ is in English. It occurs with the meaning ‘self’ only on stems with a transitive meaning.
‣ 7 A more common way of expressing the idea of ‘self’ uses the ‘middle voice’ pattern. This is covered in detail in §35.2.
‣ 8 You learned in §1.2 that ‘help’ in SENĆOŦEN is ȻENÁṈET. But here, the stem that ‑SET attaches to is ȻENEṈI-. What is going on here is a somewhat complicated automatic process of stress shift and vowel change. Basically, the ‑SET/‑SOT suffix causes stress in a word to shift rightward. Other suffixes also cause this to happen. This process is covered in detail if §34.
 | QENESET ĆE. | ‘Look at yourself!’ |
 | EWENE NE ŚQENOSEṈ. | ‘I don’t have a mirror.’ |
| MÁ¸ȻEȽSET SW̱. | ‘You injured yourself.’ |
| ÁĆENÁ! | ‘My goodness!’ |
| 13.1A. Translate each of the following into English. Use the SENĆOŦEN. 1. ŦQESET TŦE SWIU¸LES. 2. ŚÁMESET SEN. 3. MÁ¸ȻEȽSET E LE¸ SW̱? 4. QENESET SEN. | 13.1B. Translate each of the following into SENĆOŦEN. 1. I dried myself. 2. We know ourselves. 3. Did you scratch yourself? 4. They looked at themselves. |