This paper examines the verbal reflexivemorpheme in Kannada, illustrating that itsdistribution is best characterized in termsof the interaction between lexical-aspectualstructure and thematic structure.This morpheme occurs whenever thereis a particular kind of configurational mismatchbetween these two representations.Thus, the existence of these two kinds ofsemantic representation is supported.The distribution of the verbal reflexive isindependent of the binding theory, whichis syntactic. The analysis of Kannada verbalreflexives extends straightforwardly toother languages. Notably, the analysiscaptures the behavior of Romance reflexiveclitics. The analysis presented here issuperior to one which treats suchmorphemes as argument absorbing operatorsor as morphemes with semanticallyreflexive content.