Reciprocals 427
(48) Ali saleng/patang pokol bi' Hasan.
Ali hit with Hasan
‘Ali and Hasan hit each other.’
(49) Marlena rem-kerem-an sorat so Siti.
Marlena RED-send-AN letter with Siti
‘Marlena and Siti sent each other letters.’
In (48), which is synonymous with (45), Ali alone is in subject position and the
other agent Hasan occurs as the object of the preposition bi' ‘with’. Likewise, in
the reduplicated reciprocal in (49), an analogue of (43), the agent Marlena oc-
curs as the subject and the other agent Siti as the object of the preposition so
‘with’.
Further, saleng can occur in the reduplicated structure fully grammatical-
ly, as illustrated in (50) and (51).
(50) Nobun ban Mutmainah saleng ri'-berri'-an buku.
Nobun and Mutmainah RED.give-AN book
‘Nobun and Mutmainah gave books to each other.’
(51) Na'-kana' saleng bi'-tobi'-an.
RED-child RED-pinch-AN
‘The children pinched each other.’
As these data show, unlike the situation in many languages, reciprocals
and reflexives share neither distributional nor binding properties. While the
reflexive aba'na dibi' has a fairly free distribution, the antecedents of reciproc-
als must bear the actor role in the clause in which the reciprocal structure oc-
curs.
2.1 The components of reciprocals
None of the components of reciprocals is used only to denote reciprocals. Each
of the key components has other uses. Reduplication of verbs is described in
detail in Chapter 5 section 3.1, particularly with respect to multiple actions. The
suffix -an here is the iterative suffix, described in Chapter 9 section 3, and de-
notes that the action occurred more than once. The morphemes saleng, patang,
and gante also have uses outside of the reciprocal construction.
Saleng, patang, and gante can all be used adverbially. For example, in
(52-54), saleng is used with plural subjects, but in neither case do the subjects
act reciprocally.