ABSTRACT
In this chapter the focus will be on the competition between the reciprocal strategies of PDE. To this end, I will build on the observations made in the preceding chapters and add further data supporting my claims on the functional differentiation between the intransitive variant described in the preceding chapter, the basic reciprocal construction and what I termed spell-out constructions. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First I will discuss cross-linguistic data concerning functional splits between variable reciprocal constructions that have long been known and ask to what extent these generalizations can be carried over to the situation in PDE. I will then survey previous research on functional splits in English and present quantitative data that support claims on these splits. Furthermore, I will attempt to describe the complete picture, i.e. the interaction between all three of the aforementioned constructions.
