Reflexivity can be regarded as a means by which a linguistic structure echoes a real life situation in which an individual affects himself whether in a whole or a partial sense. Reflixivity represents a prevalent linguistic aspect in most if not all languages. There are points of resemblance as well as variation pertinent to reflexivity cross-linguistically. Thus French is said to be abundant in reflexive verbs whereas English is generally believed to lack this type of verbs. An important question imposes itself of whether the presence of a reflexive marker is imperative in order to consider a structure to be reflexive. The current study attempts to offer an answer.
The current paper deals with whole self and partitive self reflexive constructions in English and French. The general aim is to draw a comparison between the treatment of this linguistic aspect in both languages to detect the points of convergence and divergence. Usually, reflexivity is handled either from a syntactic or a semantic perspective. The former highlights the dissimilarities of reflexive construction in both languages whereas the latter asserts their similarities. This paper is divided into an introduction, four parts and a conclusion. The first part presents some definitions of reflexivity. The second and the third deal with syntactic and semantic treatment of reflexivity in both languages. The fourth part is devoted to the analysis of some whole self and partitive self reflexive constructions in English and French. The conclusion exhibits the results and findings reached through the data analysis.