Italian reciprocals #

Italian marks reciprocity with the clitic si, which is also the third-person reflexive clitic, so a clause such as Mary e Lisa si sono descritte reads as 'Mary and Lisa described themselves' or as 'Mary and Lisa described each other', and the adverbial a vicenda 'mutually' leaves only the reciprocal reading. A closed class of transitive verbs, abbracciare 'hug', baciare 'kiss', sposare 'marry' and the others of Palmieri's Appendix A, also reads reciprocally with no marker at all under the causative fare, Ho fatto abbracciare Mary e Lisa 'I made Mary and Lisa hug', where si is in fact excluded, though in a finite clause the same verbs still need it. These are the lexical reciprocals, entries of Verbs; Palmieri's list of them and her analysis of the class are Studies/Palmieri2024.lean.

Italian also has the bipartite l'un l'altro, which Evans lists. As in French, with a direct object it does not replace si but is added to it: Si amano l'un l'altro beside *Amano l'un l'altro, Maslova's (33).