Passives, middles, and reflexives in Irish

This article examines the development of the progressive passive construction of Irish from the early Irish to the modern Irish period. This construction is unusual in that it employs what superficially resembles a reflexive marker to indicate passivity. The article argues that the passive marker originated as a reflexive marker, but that due to a change in the reflexive system in the period 1000-1600, it gradually took on its modern function, shedding its earlier one. Crucial to this change was the use of the same formal marker in middle constructions. Much of the article is taken up with a discussion of middle verbs cross-linguistically and in Irish, and in showing that these provide a link between reflexives and passives. The main conclusion is that the development in question represents grammaticalization of the pronominal marker involved in the various constructions.