Evidence of a reflexive cycle in Selkup

Abstract The article presents and compares the inventory of reflexive pronouns and intensifiers across several Selkup dialects (Northern, Central, Ket, Middle Ob, Chaya) based on the material published in the Selkup Language Corpus and INEL Selkup Corpus. Two reflexive markers, on- and piːre , are attested. It is argued that piːre is a relatively recently grammaticalized item, and that the synchronic outcomes show different stages of the grammaticalization process, which is analyzed as a cycle that goes from a simple pronoun through the reinforcement and the compound pronoun stages before returning to the simple pronoun stage again, except with a different lexical representation of the reflexive.