LINGUIST List 5.565

Thu 19 May 1994

Sum: Emphatic Reflexives

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Dear subscribers

About a month ago I posted a query concerning post-verbal emphatic
reflexives in English. Several people responded to me and some of them
kindly replied to my further questions. Along with all my gratitude to
them, I post a summary of their respondences here.

**************************************************
My first examples are as follows:
 (1) John himself did the job.
 (2) John did the job himself.
 (3) John has not himself done the job.
 (4) *The car came here itself.
 (5) To remain secure and prosperous themselves, wealthy nations
 must extend the kind of co-operation to the less fortunate
 members that will inspire hope, confidence, and progress.
 (Brown Corpus, G350280-0300)

Most of the respondents found no difficulty accepting (4) and other
nonhuman examples.

Adger Williams (US) says that a sentence like (6) seems possible
 (6) The branch fell off the tree itself
in the sense of "denying the assertion that someone cut the branch
off the tree". He adds "In cases like that, the sentence would be
acceptable maybe of anything that seems to have done something like
something usually done by a human Agent."

Tom Cravens (US), who says he is a native speaker of midwestern
American English (Illinois), "have no trouble whatsoever accepting
(4). He notes "The car would have to have moved with no agency, but
that's okay: it rolled down the hill. . . . it seems to me that the
governing factors are semantic, not syntactic, i.e. anything that
could be construed as acting without overt agency in the real world
(in the fairy-tale world there are probably no limits) can take the
construction in question, I would think."

John Lee (UK) also does not "see anything wrong with (4). Obviously,
it would mean that the car had no driver, but this is not to make it
unacceptable. Perhaps there's an issue here about the distinction
between 'itself' and 'by itself', where I could be tending to read (4)
as if it were 'The car came here by itself' -- but that is a possible
way to read it, although it admittedly is not the same as (2).
However, context could bias this: 'The controls wouldn't work and I
couldn't steer; the car came here itself'. -- I'd say this is the same
reading as (2). The implication is of agency in the subject, but it's
easy to construct contexts where non-human or inanimate objects
have that attribute."

As for (5), Fergus Simpson (UK) says he doesn't "find any problems
with your Brown Corpus example," and provides similar examples:
 (7) To remain secure and prosperous themselves, Japanese
 companies/ NATO members/ university institutions/ families
 of gorillas/ etc. must .....
He notes "However, all must be capable of being Agents. Inanimates
are a problem in a sentence of this type." citing (8):
 (8) To maintain reliability and reputation (*themselves), Japanese
 cars must be rigorously tested.

A few other people also provided me with further examples and
interesting comments.

Peter Patrikis (US) says "As for animals, the emphatic reflexive
poses no difficulty. Nor is there any difficulty with machines that
perform actions." and cites (9) and (10):
 (9) Every morning my dog brings in the newspaper himself.
 (10) The television is programmed to turn itself off all [by] itself.
though he notes that as for (9) he "would not replace 'himself' with
'itself,' because pets are personified in American usage (To the
question 'Where is your cat?' one would NOT reply 'It is in the
bedroom.'). If we had robots or other automata, then I might well say
'Every morning my robot brings in the newspaper itself,' but I
suspect that robots too would be quickly personified." and for (10),
regarding the optional preposition _by_, "It would be acceptable to
state 'The television is programmed to turn itself off itself.' --- but
it is stylistically just a bit awkward."

Tom Cravens sent me the following examples and his judgment about
them:
 (11) The car came here (by) itself.
 --You come home to find your friend Bobby's car in the driveway,
but there's no sign of Bobby anywhere. In my native Southern Illinoisan,
you could easily say something like "Looks like that car came here
itself", as well as "by itself", which would be my Standard Midwestern
version.
 (12) The TV broke (by) itself.
 --In the appropriate context, "The TV broke itself" works, too, as
Standard. Your five-year-old just can't resist tinkering with electronic
things; you turn on the TV and can't get it to work. You ask the child if
s/he has been fooling with the TV,and the answer, of course, is no. "OK,
the TV broke itself, just like the fax machine".
 (13) The TV turned itself on / turned on by itself. -- Okay either
 way (The former is an instance of the real reflexive, though.)
 (14) The phone rang (by) itself. -- Much better with by. marginally
 okay without it, but needs stress on itself

Fergus Simpson suggested that there might be acceptability difference
between when the preposition _by_ is added and when it is not.
Citing (15)-(22), he says "If the emphatic reflexive can be assigned
the Theta-role AGENT then it seems to be acceptable."
 (15) ??The car came by itself.
 (16) *The car came itself.
 (17) The cat came by itself.
 (18) The cat came itself.
 (19) The car caught fire by itself.
 (20) The car (itself) caught fire (itself) .
 (21) *The cat caught fire by itself.
 (22) The cat (itself) caught fire (*itself).
He find (15) "questionable" and, (16) he would "definitely rule out".
By contrast, (17) and (80) have no problems, he thinks, "because in
these two, the reflexive can be AGENT as it takes it's interpretation
from 'cat' which is something that can come. It is assigned the role
AGENT by the preposition 'by'.
The contrast between (19)-(20) and (21)-(22) is as follows, he says:
A car is full of gas and mechanics and is capable of catching fire
without the intervention of any other AGENT. So in (19) "car" has the
Theta-role THEME/EXPERIENCER and the reflexive is the AGENT. In
(21)-(22), it is not probable that the "cat" was the AGENT (i.e.: it
spontaneously self-combusted, or poured gas on itself and lit a
match.).
He also notes that people who allow (21) would agree that something
else other than the cat set it on fire. (Tom Cravens noted that (21)
works just fine for him, as Standard Midwestern American, given a
scenario similar to (12).)

There seems to be something more to be explored about the relation
between the use of the preposition _by_ and the post-verbal
inanimate ER.

Fergus also suggested some "other interesting things to look at with
ERs": a) Their interaction with (phonological) clitics:
 (23) *They've/They have themselves been drinking.
 (24)a. I met John, my neighbour's, daughter.
 (i.e.. I met the daughter of John, my neighbour)
 b. *I met John himself's daughter.
 (possibly OK in Hiberno-English)
 b) The role of (in)definiteness in acceptability of ERs
 (25)a. *Someone himself drank the beer
 b. ?Someone drank the beer himself

As for phenomena in other languages, Tom Cravens suggests:
There are, however, similar phenomena in Romance languages, with
much wider use and acceptability, the so-called no-fault passive,
which looks, and morphosyntactically is, reflexive: Spanish "se me
rompio'" "It broke on me". There's extensive literature on the
Romance phenomena.

As for the references of emphatic reflexives, Fergus Simpson sent
me the following list:

BICKERTON, D. (1989) "HE HIMSELF: ANAPHOR, PRONOUN, OR....?" in
LINGUISTIC INQUIRY 18, pp345-348.

EDMONDSON, J.A. & PLANK, F. (1978) "GREAT EXPECTATIONS: AN
INTENSIVE SELF ANALYSIS" in LINGUISTICS & PHILOSOPHY 2, pp373-
413

FUKUDA, KAORU (1989) "ON EMPHATIC REFLEXIVES" in ENGLISH
LINGUISTICS 6, pp36-51.

KONIG, E. (1991) THE MEANING OF FOCUS PARTICLES, LONDON,
ROUTLEDGE (chapter 4.3 looks at ERs) McKAY, E.A. (1991) "HE
HIMSELF: UNDISCOVERING AN ANAPHOR in LINGUISTIC INQUIRY 22,
pp368-373.

MORAVCSIK, E.A. (1972) "SOME CROSSLINGUISTIC GENERALISATIONS
ABOUT INTENSIFIER CONSTRUCTIONS in PAPERS FROM THE CHICAGO
LINGUISTIC SOCIETY, 8th REGIONAL MEETINGpp271-277

SAXENA,A & SUBBARAO,K.V (1985) "INTENSIFIERS IN HINDI" in
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DRAVIDIAN LINGUISTICS 14:1, pp56-68.
(unfortunately not wholly correct on semantic restrictionsbut
otherwise good description of Hindi)

ZRIBI-HERTZ, A. (1989) "ANAPHOR BINDING AND NARRATIVE POINT OF
VIEW: ENGLISH REFLEXIVE PRONOUNS IN SENTENCE AND DISCOURSE in
LANGUAGE 65, pp695-727

Ko"nig's book was also suggested by Martin Haspelmath.

Keisuke Koga
Faculty of Humanities, Fukuoka University, Japan
pxh01332niftyserve.or.jp, or
le037596cc.fukuoka-u.ac.jp