Reciprocal pronoun

Reciprocal pronouns are a type of pronoun which can be used to refer to a noun phrase mentioned earlier in a sentence. The reciprocal pronouns found in English are one another and each other, and they form the category of anaphors along with reflexive pronouns (myself, yourselves, etc.).

Within the theory of generative grammar, and within phrase-structure grammar, binding theory explains how anaphors share a relationship with their referents.

Binding Principle A of this theory states:

In binding theory, the category of anaphor includes both reflexives and reciprocals, which is a problem, since they are distributed differently.

The differences in the distribution of reflexives and reciprocals are illustrated below using X-bar theory tree diagrams.

Reflexive pronouns are used similarly to reciprocal pronouns in the sense that they typically refer back to the subject of the sentence.

(1) John and Mary like themselves. (2) John and Mary like each other.

The main difference between reflexives, as in example (1), and reciprocal pronouns, as in example (2), is that reflexives are used when the subject acts upon itself. Reciprocals are used when members of a group perform the same action relative to one another. Reciprocal pronouns exist in many languages. They are associated with plural noun phrases and indicate a reciprocal relationship between the members of the plural noun phrase. This means that some member (x) of the plural subject is acting on another member (y) of the subject, and that member (y) is also acting on (x), and that both x and y are members of the group denoted by the antecedent subject.

Below are examples of reciprocal pronouns and how their relationship to their antecedents contrasts to cases of reflexive pronoun relationships, and regular transitive relationships, and how they behave in relation to direct object pronouns in the same situation. Let R denote a Relation, and let the variables (for example, (x, y) ) stand for the arguments introduced by R.

Therefore, we can look at a reciprocal relationship using this notation, using the verb see as the relation: see(Anne, Betty) and see(Betty, Anne).

Although both reciprocal and reflexive pronouns are both classified as anaphors, there are some distributional differences between them. For example, reciprocal pronouns can appear in the subject position of noun phrases, whereas reflexives cannot.

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