Esperanto · Chapter 7 · Lesson 14 · Grammar primer
Si and sia: the reflexive
Li vidis lian hundon and li vidis sian hundon are different dogs. The third-person reflexive is the one agreement rule that catches intermediate learners daily.
The short version
sia is his own, lia is the other man's
Si and sia point back at the subject of the clause they sit in. Li vidis sian hundon is he saw his own dog; li vidis lian hundon is he saw somebody else's. English uses his for both and has to bolt on own or a name to disambiguate. The pair exists only in the third person, because mi and vi are already unambiguous: mi lavas min, but li lavas sin.
Li vidis sian hundon.
si can never be the subject, nor sit inside one
Si only ever points back at a subject, which means it cannot be one. That rules out sia inside a subject phrase too: sia patro amas lin is not a sentence, and lia patro amas lin is. The same goes for a compound subject, li kaj lia frato venis. And where a Romance language would use a reflexive verb, Esperanto usually wants -iĝ-: la pordo malfermiĝis, not la pordo malfermis sin.
Lia patro amas lin.
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