Delahunty and Garvey
Exercise
- Identify the forms in Table 4 that include a genitive personal pro-
noun. - Identify the case of the non-genitive personal pronouns in the forms
in Table 4. - Many non-standard English dialects use the forms hisself and their-
selves. Why do you think they do that?
We say that these forms are both reflexive and intensive because they are
used in two quite distinct ways. We say they are reflexive when they are used
as the object of a verb or preposition (8a-c); we say they are intensive when
they are used as modifiers (9, 10).
(8) a. Adelaide hurt herself.
b. Adelaide bought herself a new Lamborghini.
c. Rudy talks to himself a lot.
The pronouns in (8a-c) are reflexive: in (8a) herself is the direct object of
hurt; in (8b) it is the indirect object of buy; in (8c) himself is the object of
the preposition to. The pronouns and their antecedents are in different noun
phrases.
An intensive pronoun may occur within the noun phrase of its anteced-
ent, typically following and modifying its antecedent directly:
(9) Adelaide herself completed the audit.However, an intensive pronoun may also be moved away from the phrase
it modifies:
(10) Adelaide completed the audit herself.Sentences with reflexives cannot be related in the way that (9) and (10) are.
In other words, sentence (8a) cannot be rearranged as (11) without signifi-
cantly changing its meaning:
(11) ?Adelaide herself hurt.