1 47. Intensifiers and Reflexive Pronouns Ekkehard König and Peter Siemund (with Stephan Töpper) 1. Defining the values Reflexive pronouns (or “reflexive anaphors“) are expressions which are prototypically used to indicate that a non-subject argument of a transitive predicate is coreferential with (or bound by) the subject, i.e. expressions like German sich, Russian sebja, Turkish kendi, Mandarin zìj0, English x-self: (1) Johni saw himselfi in the mirror. By intensifiers we mean expressions like German selbst, Russian sam, Turkish kendi, Mandarin zìj0, English x-self, which can be adjoined to either NPs or VPs, are invariably focused and thus are prosodically prominent. The main function of intensifiers can be seen in the evoking of alternatives to the referent of the NP they relate to: (2) a. (adnominal) The director himself opened the letter. b. (adverbial) The director opened the letter himself. Our main motivation for considering reflexives and intensifiers in tandem is that they are frequently identical in form and thus only differentiated in terms of distribution (as, for instance, in English). In languages in which they are formally differentiated, intensifiers can be used to reinforce König, Ekkehard and Peter Siemund (2005) ‘Intensifiers and reflexive pronouns’, in: Martin Haspelmath, Matthew Dryer, David Gil and Bernard Comrie (eds.) World Atlas of Language Structures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 194-197.