On a Class of Figure Reflexives in Romanian: Ion se spală pe mâini ‘John washes his hands’

The aim of the paper is to discuss a class of transitive-prepositional reflexive constructions in Romanian, tied to the sphere of inalienable possession. It is argued that their properties are best explained by the presence of a prepositional phrase (pP), generated as the complement of V, which encodes a figure-ground relation between a possessor and an inalienably possessed object. Transitive variants of these constructions have a thematic Voice head and the reflexive clitic is merged as the figure argument and bound by the DP in spec, Voice. Unaccusative variants, on the other hand, have an expletive Voice head. In these cases, the DP subject merges in the position of the figure argument and raises to Tense while the reflexive clitic is a purely case-absorbing element that does not saturate a theta role.