Long-Distance Reflexives: the Famous sig

If you read a syntax textbook, sooner or later you will meet an Icelandic example with the little word sig in it — because Icelandic's reflexive is one of the most-discussed facts in the study of human language. In English, himself must find its antecedent inside its own clause: Jón said that María loves himself is simply broken, because himself cannot reach up to Jón across the clause boundary. Icelandic's sig can. It can be bound long-distance — by a subject several clauses up — and the thing that licenses that reach is the subjunctive mood in the clauses it passes through. This page is about that famous construction: how far sig can travel, what lets it travel, and what stops it. (For the basic, local reflexive — Jón rakaði sig "Jón shaved (himself)" — see the reflexive pronoun page; for the reflexive possessive sinn, see its own page. Here we assume the basics and go up.)

The reflexive itself: sig / sér / sín

Long-distance binding uses the very same reflexive you already know. sig has no nominative (a reflexive can never be a subject) and the same form whatever its antecedent's gender or number — there is one reflexive for "himself / herself / itself / themselves":

The case is set, as always, by the verb or preposition that governs sig in its own clause — elska sig (accusative), hjálpa sér (dative), sakna sín (genitive). What changes long-distance is not the form but how far away the antecedent may sit.

Local binding: the baseline

Start with the ordinary case, where sig refers to the subject of its own clause. Here Icelandic and English agree completely.

Nothing surprising yet. The interest begins the moment sig sits in an embedded clause and there are two possible antecedents: a subject inside its own clause, and a subject in the clause above.

Long-distance binding through the subjunctive

Consider a sentence with one level of embedding, where the embedded verb is subjunctive:

In English, himself in "María loves himself" could only be María (and would be feminine anyway). Icelandic sig does the opposite of what an English speaker expects: across the subjunctive boundary, it reaches up and is bound by Jón, the subject of the higher clause. The sentence means Jón says María loves him (= Jón). The subjunctive elski is doing the licensing: it marks the embedded clause as a reported, non-asserted domain — Jón's perspective — and sig is allowed to climb out to the holder of that perspective.

Crucially, the reach is not capped at one clause. Stack subjunctive clauses and sig can be bound by any of the higher subjects, all the way to the top:

This three-clause example is the classic demonstration: sig is genuinely ambiguous among Pétur (local), María (one up), and Jón (two up). The chain of subjunctives — telur and elski are subjunctive in the embedded clauses — keeps the "binding domain" open all the way up, so every higher subject is in reach. Native speakers resolve it by context and plausibility, but the grammar permits all three.

The indicative blocks it: the curtain

Here is the other half — and the half that proves the subjunctive is really the licenser. Replace the subjunctive complement with an indicative one, and the long-distance reading disappears. Only the local reading survives.

Set the minimal pair side by side. With subjunctive elski (Jón segir að María elski sig), sig may climb to Jón. With indicative elskar (Jón veit að María elskar sig), sig is trapped in its own clause and can only mean María herself. The only thing that changed is the mood of the embedded verb — which is why linguists say the subjunctive licenses long-distance binding. (Note too that the matrix verb tends to come along for the ride: segja "say" naturally takes the subjunctive and a reported perspective; vita "know" is factive and naturally takes the indicative — see the subjunctive in depth. The mood and the binding move together.)

That last example also shows something English speakers find startling: sig skips right over the local subject ég "I" (a first person!) to land on the higher hún. A reflexive does not have to take the nearest subject — through the subjunctive, it takes a higher one, and indeed cannot be bound by a 1st/2nd-person local subject at all (sig is inherently 3rd person).

The honest deeper story: it isn't pure syntax

A rigorous page must flag this, because it is where the literature actually sits. The clean rule "subjunctive licenses, indicative blocks" is the right generalisation to learn and is correct for the core cases above. But decades of research (Maling 1984; Sigurðsson 1990; Sigurjónsdóttir 1992; Thráinsson) showed that long-distance sig is ultimately logophoric — it tracks whose point of view is being represented, not just the bare morphology of the verb. The subjunctive is the normal grammatical signal that a clause reports someone's perspective, which is why it correlates so tightly with the long-distance reading; but where a perspective-holder is established by the discourse, speakers can occasionally bind sig across material that is not subjunctive. For a learner, the practical upshot is unchanged: produce long-distance sig only through subjunctive clauses, bound to a perspective-holding subject (a sayer, a thinker, a knower whose view is reported), and you will be on solid ground. The logophoric refinement explains the edges; the subjunctive rule gets you the core right.

Why this matters to an English speaker

The transfer trap is total: English himself is strictly local, so an English speaker's instinct is to assume sig must also point inside its own clause — and therefore to miss the long-distance reading entirely, mis-hearing Jón segir að María elski sig as "María loves herself." That is the wrong reading. Worse, in production, an English speaker who wants to say "Jón says María loves him (Jón)" will reach for the ordinary pronoun hann — Jón segir að María elski hann — which is grammatical but means María loves some other man, not Jón. So the reflexive is meaning-bearing across the clause boundary: sig says "the higher subject," hann says "someone else." You cannot opt out of the distinction.

Common Mistakes

The English-trained reflex — "the reflexive must be local" — produces the wrong interpretation. Through the subjunctive, sig binds up to Jón.

Across the subjunctive boundary, sig and hann contrast in reference: sig = the higher subject, hann = a third party. Choosing hann for "Jón" silently changes who is loved.

The indicative draws the curtain: it blocks the long-distance reading. Long-distance sig lives only in subjunctive (and non-finite) domains.

sig is always 3rd person and reflexive to a 3rd-person antecedent. It can never stand for a 1st- or 2nd-person referent; use the ordinary object pronoun (mig, þig) instead.

Key Takeaways

• Icelandic's reflexive sig / sér / sín can be bound long-distance — by the subject of a higher clause, across one or more clause boundaries — not just locally like English himself.
• The licenser is the subjunctive: sig climbs through subjunctive clauses (Jón segir að María *elski sig → *sig = Jón). An indicative complement blocks the long-distance reading and leaves only the local one (Jón veit að María *elskar sig* → "María loves herself").
• With stacked subjunctives, sig can be bound by any higher subject: Jón veit að María telur að Pétur elski sig — sig may be Jón, María, or Pétur.
• The choice is meaning-bearing: sig = the higher subject; the plain pronoun hann/hana = a different person. sig is inherently 3rd person (never ég/þú referents) and has no nominative.
• The deeper account is logophoric (point-of-view tracking; Maling, Sigurðsson, Sigurjónsdóttir); the subjunctive is the reliable grammatical signal of that perspective and the rule to learn. This unites two flagship features — the living subjunctive and the famous reflexive — under one generalisation.