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Starting from a morphosyntactic puzzle of the Eastern Uralic languages (possessor agreement suffixes functioning as accusative allomorphs on pronominal objects), we identify a pronoun cycle which leads from reflexives via intensifiers and via referentially independent intensive pronouns to neutral pronouns. In Tundra Nenets, we also point out evidence of three rounds of reflexive renewal, with the three sets of pronouns frozen at different stages of the cycle. The analysis has implications for debated issues of language change. We demonstrate that elements participating in cyclic changes not only suffer feature loss but also incorporate features. Based on the recurring cycle in Tundra Nenets, we argue that the cyclicity of linguistic changes implies a notion of unidirectionality that also leaves room for unpredictable outcomes.
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