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This article provides an overview of the various means that languages use to represent interpretive dependencies and reflexive predicates. These means are exemplified on the basis of a broad variety of languages. The patterns are prima facie complex, involving semireflexives, full reflexives, and affixal reflexives. Yet they can be accounted for on the basis of the morphosyntactic properties of the elements involved, together with the way these elements interact with a number of universal principles and the syntactic environment. The central principles involved are (a) a principle restricting chain formation by Agree and (b) a general principle applying to reflexive predicates that requires them to be licensed, either through the addition of structural complexity for protection or through a lexical bundling operation, governed by (c) an economy principle. Although I conclude that there is no unified notion of what a reflexive is, reflexives do have a shared core, namely their role in the licensing of reflexivity.

In order to understand the basis of language in the brain, we must be able to describe the neurological systems that are used in language comprehension and production. In this paper, one technique for functional neuroimaging is discussed: measurement of blood flow change using positron emission tomography (PET). Two experiments were carried out investigating the usefulness of this method. One experiment examined the intrinsic time limitations of blood flow change as a measure of cognitive activity. A second issue considered is the replicability of the results obtained using this method. A comparison of two experiments containing the same conditions suggests that the results are replicable, when the experiments and method are similar. One case is discussed where the experiments differ; it is suggested that this is due to a difference in the materials used in the experiments, and that the difference has a principled basis.