Binding Domains: Pronouns vs Reflexives

When two noun phrases in a sentence might refer to the same person, every language needs a way to say whether they do. English mostly leaves this to a single overworked distinction (himself vs him) and tolerates a lot of ambiguity — John saw his book could be John's book or another man's. Icelandic does not tolerate it: it forces a grammatical choice between a reflexive and a plain pronoun, and that choice is the meaning. sig means "the subject," hann means "someone else"; sinn means "the subject's," hans means "another's." This page gives the framework that governs the choice — the idea of a binding domain and the complementary distribution of reflexives and pronouns inside it. (The famous case where the reflexive reaches out of its clause across the subjunctive — long-distance sig — has its own page; here we build the local framework that the long-distance case extends.)

Two principles, one domain

Linguists summarise the facts with two complementary statements (the classic "Condition A" and "Condition B"), and you do not need the labels to use them:

• A reflexive (sig / sér / sín, possessive sinn) must be bound inside its domain — it must find an antecedent, normally the subject, within the local clause.
• A plain pronoun (hann / hana / það, possessive hans / hennar) must be free inside that same domain — it must not take the local subject as antecedent.

Put the two together and you get complementary distribution: in the position where a reflexive is required to point at the subject, a pronoun is forbidden from doing so, and vice versa. They carve up the space between them with no overlap. The "domain" is, to a first approximation, the smallest clause containing the pronoun and a subject — which is why an indicative subordinate clause is its own domain, while the subjunctive (below) stretches it.

The local complementary pair: sig vs hann

Start with the cleanest case — a single clause with a transitive verb. Jón rakaði sig and Jón rakaði hann are both perfectly grammatical, but they mean different things, and the difference is exactly the complementarity:

There is no ambiguity to resolve and no context needed: sig can only be Jón, hann can only be someone else. English himself / him draws the same line — but Icelandic enforces it more rigidly and across more constructions, as we will see. A second illustration with a dative-governing verb (so you also see the case alternation):

The possessive complementary pair: sinn vs hans

The same complementarity runs through the possessives, and this is where the contrast with English bites hardest, because English has only his. Icelandic splits it: sinn is the reflexive possessive ("the subject's own"), hans the free possessive ("his = someone else's").

Set against the English: John drove his car is genuinely ambiguous — own car or another man's? Icelandic forces you to decide before you speak: sinn (Jón's) or hans (another's). So binding theory here is not an abstraction for syntacticians; it is a daily disambiguation tool that Icelandic builds into the grammar. (The reflexive possessive has its own dedicated page with the full paradigm — see reflexive-possessive sinn.)

The subjunctive extends the reflexive's domain

So far, reflexive and pronoun split one clause cleanly. The dramatic complication — and the bridge to the long-distance page — is that the subjunctive enlarges the reflexive's domain upward. When a subordinate clause is subjunctive, the reflexive inside it can be bound not only by its own local subject but by the subject of the higher clause, because the subjunctive keeps the binding domain "open" past the clause boundary.

The minimal pair is the whole point: change elski (subjunctive) to elskar (indicative) and the reflexive's reach collapses from "up to Jón" down to "only María." The pronoun's behaviour is the mirror image: under the subjunctive, where sig reaches up to Jón, the plain hann is barred from meaning Jón and must denote a third party — complementarity holds even across the extended domain.

That is as far as we take it here. The full mechanics — stacked subjunctives, ambiguity among several higher subjects, the logophoric (point-of-view) story — are the subject of the long-distance reflexive page. The framework to carry there is: the subjunctive stretches the domain so the reflexive can climb; the indicative seals it so it cannot.

A note on the domain's edges

Two refinements keep the framework honest. First, a possessor inside a subject NP does not always count as the binder you might expect — binding is computed from the subject, so in Jón sá bók sína "Jón saw his (own) book," sína is bound by the subject Jón, which is exactly the local case. Second, sig is inherently third person: it can never be bound by a first- or second-person subject (\ég rakaði sig), so with ég/þú subjects you use the ordinary object pronoun *mig/þig. These edges matter, but they do not disturb the core: within the domain, reflexive = subject, pronoun = non-subject.

Why this is hard for English speakers

English has the reflexive/pronoun contrast (himself vs him), so the local complementary pair feels familiar — and you can lean on that. Two things do not transfer. First, the possessive split: English his covers both sinn and hans, so English speakers, hearing "John drove his car," do not even feel a choice to make and default to whichever pronoun comes to mind — producing bílinn hans (another man's car) when they mean bílinn sinn (Jón's). Because the distinction is invisible in English, it is the single most common binding error. Second, the obligatoriness: English tolerates the ambiguity Icelandic forbids, so learners under-use sinn and over-use hans, silently handing the possession to a third party. The fix is a habit: whenever you are about to say "his/her/their" and the owner is the subject of the clause, reach for sinn; only use hans/hennar/þeirra when the owner is someone else.

Common Mistakes

Inside the clause, the reflexive points at the subject and the pronoun cannot. Using hann for "himself" silently changes who got shaved.

The English his hides the choice; Icelandic forces it. Subject's own = sinn; someone else's = hans.

Complementarity cuts both ways: if the owner is not the subject, you must use the free possessive hennar, not the reflexive sín.

sig only ever binds to a third-person subject. With ég/þú, the "reflexive" is just the plain object pronoun mig/þig.

The indicative closes the domain; only the subjunctive stretches it so the reflexive can reach the higher subject (full treatment on binding-sig).

Key Takeaways

• Reflexives and pronouns are in complementary distribution within a domain: a reflexive (sig, sinn) must be bound by the subject; a pronoun (hann, hans) must be free of it. Wherever one is required, the other is barred.
• The choice is meaning-bearing and obligatory: sig/sinn = the subject (and its possessions); hann/hans = someone else. Where English his leaves "John drove his car" ambiguous, Icelandic forces sinn (Jón's) vs hans (another's).
• The possessive split (sinn vs hans) is the hardest transfer point because English has only his; default to sinn when the owner is the clause subject.
• The subjunctive extends the reflexive's domain upward (Jón segir að María elski sig → Jón), while the indicative seals it (... elskar sig → only María) — the springboard to long-distance binding.
• sig is inherently 3rd person; with ég/þú subjects the reflexive is the plain object pronoun mig/þig.