Inherent reflexive marking

A. To avoid a sense that this is just a trait of exotic languages, we return to a European frill of this kind. In English, one can say I wash myself— this is normal reflexivity, marking an action that one performs upon oneself. But in other European languages, one pays much closer attention to whether an action occurs upon oneself. In Spanish, yo me siento means “I sit myself down.” In French, je me fâche is “I anger myself”; in German, ich erinnere mich is “I remember myself.”

B. Here, the literal kind of reflexivity that English has went a step further. Now, the reflexive marker is grammaticalized as a way of indicating even the slightest degree to which one could conceive of an action as happening to a person rather than being effected by the person on something or someone else.