written English and an elevated register than it does spoken English (the
same grammar states that it is met with twice as often in academic texts and
novels as in conversation and the news). It would appear to have the fixity
sought by Chomsky. To see that this is an illusion, it suffices to compare it
with a similar construction, but with far more occurrences (4,700 per million
words) – the reflexive construction (in English, pronouns ending in ‘-self’;
French uses the pronoun se– il s’est regardé dans la glace[he looked at himself
in the mirror] – or pronouns composed with même– il s’est blessé lui-même
[he wounded himself]).
The syntactical constraints on this construction likewise concern the
determination of the pronoun’s antecedent. Thus, sentence (16) is grammatical,
while sentence (17) is not:
(16) He wanted himself to win.
(17) *He wished (that) himself wouldn’t have to do it.
The constraints are the same as for reciprocal pronouns (roughly, the
antecedent must belong to the same clause as the reflexive pronoun); and it
is sufficient to add that there must be agreement in person between antecedent
and reflexive. But as the construction occurs frequently, it does not take long
to come across counter-examples, which are perfectly intelligible and are not
experienced by native speakers as solecisms. Here is one drawn from a
detective novel. The station-master is trying to calm an irate customer who
claims that the porter has insulted him and that this is bad for his heart:
(18) If you’ve got a bad heart, I should calm yourself, Sir.
This sentence seems to be the grammatically unwarranted combination of
two sentences that conform to the rules:
(19) If you’ve got a bad heart, you should calm yourself, Sir.
(20) If I had a bad heart, I should calm myself, Sir.
In truth, the sentence pronounced by the station-master is not only intelligible,
it is clever – perfectly adapted to the situation of interlocution. In one and
the same sentence, he gives the customer some friendly advice, which is a
disguised reprimand, and pretends to put himself in the customer’s shoes,
to adopt his viewpoint. The sentence is the happy result of a polyphony, a
mixture of voices and viewpoints.
Chomsky would reply that this counter-example uses the rules more than
it infringes them. Or, rather, at the very moment when it infringes them, it
acknowledges them as rules. But rules that can be exploited for expressive
32 • Chapter Two