Uffe Bergeton and Roumyana Pancheva
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199582624
- eISBN:
- 9780191731068
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199582624.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Historical Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter gives an innovative account of a distinctive property of the reflexive paradigm in English within Germanic: the absence of morphologically simplex reflexives like German sich, Dutch ...
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This chapter gives an innovative account of a distinctive property of the reflexive paradigm in English within Germanic: the absence of morphologically simplex reflexives like German sich, Dutch zich. It argues that the complex pronoun+self pattern in English originates from the combination of a null pronoun plus the intensifier pro+self: [Ø [pro+self ]]. The spread of this intensified pattern was propagated through ‘anti-reflexive’ predicates, which pragmatically disfavour reflexive complements, such as threaten, afflict. Anti-reflexive predicates required intensified reflexives, while corpus searches in Old and Middle English show that inherently reflexive predicates did not, supporting the claim that the pro+self pattern spread from the former source.Less
This chapter gives an innovative account of a distinctive property of the reflexive paradigm in English within Germanic: the absence of morphologically simplex reflexives like German sich, Dutch zich. It argues that the complex pronoun+self pattern in English originates from the combination of a null pronoun plus the intensifier pro+self: [Ø [pro+self ]]. The spread of this intensified pattern was propagated through ‘anti-reflexive’ predicates, which pragmatically disfavour reflexive complements, such as threaten, afflict. Anti-reflexive predicates required intensified reflexives, while corpus searches in Old and Middle English show that inherently reflexive predicates did not, supporting the claim that the pro+self pattern spread from the former source.
