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ABSTRACT
This paper provides a comprehensive study of real-life uses of unbound reflexives (URs) in two syntactic structures, coordination and prepositional object structures, using a large amount of synchronic, diachronic, and dialectal corpus data from some Brigham Young University (BYU) corpora. Our findings show that 1) in contemporary American English, URs have different raw frequencies and proportion patterns in the two syntactic structures from anaphoric/cataphoric reflexives and also vary according to their person values; 2) the uses of URs in the two structures have shown decreasing tendencies for the past 200 years in American English; and 3) URs are more frequently used in Irish English than any other inner-circle variety of English in relation to anaphoric reflexives, which is more prominent in coordination structures than in prepositional object structures. Our findings also contribute to providing an empirical foundation for testing existing theories of URs and developing Binding Conditions in general.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Davies, The Corpus of Contemporary American English.
2 Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding; Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives”; Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View”; Reinhart and Reuland, “Anaphors and Logophors”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives”; König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms”; Cunnings and Felser, “The Role of Working Memory.”
3 Lees and Klima, “Rules for English Pronominalization.”
4 Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding; Koster, “On Binding and Control”; Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives”; Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View.”
5 Chomsky, Lectures on Government and Binding.
6 Quirk et al., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language; Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Kemmer, “Emphatic and Reflexive -Self”; König and Siemund, “Intensifiers and Reflexives,” “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Huddleston and Pullum, The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; Siemund, “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms”; Kim, “English Emphatic Reflexives.”
7 In certain cases, anaphoric reflexives occur in extended argument positions, as demonstrated in the following: (i) a. The child cried himself to sleep. b. The storm raged itself out.Examples like these are instances of fake reflexives as a subtype of the resultative construction. That is, verbs like cry and rage typically do not subcategorise for a direct object, but in these resultative construction examples a reflexive direct object is introduced in addition to a result phrase as a second internal argument.
8 König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms.”
9 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Pollard and Sag, “Anaphors in English.”
10 Baker, “Contrast, Discourse Prominence, and Intensification,” 66, (5a).
11 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns,” 54, (11b).
12 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” 137, (3h).
13 Ross, “On Declarative Sentences,” 230.
14 Cantrall, Viewpoint, Reflexives, and the Nature of Noun Phrases.
15 Baker, “Contrast, Discourse Prominence, and Intensification”; König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms.”
16 Filppula, “Irish English.”
17 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives.”
18 König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
19 Lange, “Reflexivity and Intensification.”
20 Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms.”
21 Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English; Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns.”
22 Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns.”
23 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Baker, “Contrast, Discourse Prominence, and Intensification”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms.”
24 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Baker, “Contrast, Discourse Prominence, and Intensification”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives.”
25 Quirk et al., A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English; König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms”; Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
26 Davies, The Corpus of Contemporary American English.
27 Davies, The Corpus of Historical American English.
28 Davies, Corpus of Global Web-based English.
29 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives”; Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms”; Hernández, “Free Self-forms.”
30 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns,” 5, (8)-(9).
31 Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself,” 236, (3)-(4).
32 Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms,” 285, (1d).
33 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R”.”
34 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R”,” 9, (8).
35 Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View”; Reinhart and Reuland, “Anaphors and Logophors”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
36 Reinhart and Reuland, “Anaphors and Logophors,” 311, (55b).
37 Ibid., 311, (56b).
38 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” 137, (3e).
39 Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself,” 245, (15).
40 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; Wales, Personal Pronouns; König and Siemund, “Intensifiers and Reflexives,” “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Hernández, “A Context Hierarchy of Untriggered Self-forms,” Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England; Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; Keenan, “Explaining the Creation of the Reflexive Pronouns”; Lange, “Reflexivity and Intensification”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
41 König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms,” 189, (22a).
42 Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View,” 717, (69b).
43 König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms,” 190, (24a).
44 Lange, “Reflexivity and Intensification,” 266, (30).
45 Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
46 Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
47 König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” 50, (22a).
48 Ibid., 75, (59a).
49 Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
50 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Baker, “Contrast, Discourse Prominence, and Intensification”; Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; Siemund, “Varieties of English.”
51 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R”,” 36, (42).
52 König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms.”
53 König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” 75, (58).
54 We are thankful to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out to us.
55 Carroll, “On Non-anaphor Reflexives,” “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives.”
56 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R”,” 7, (7a).
57 Ibid., 7, (7f).
58 Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives,” 189.
59 Zribi-Hertz, “Anaphor Binding and Narrative Point of View.”
60 Sells, “Aspects of Logophoricity”; Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; Brinton, “Non-anaphoric Reflexives”; Zribi-Hertz, “Emphatic or Reflexive?”
61 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Hernández, “A Context Hierarchy of Untriggered Self-forms,” Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
62 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns,” 51, (9).
63 Harris, “The Grammar of Irish English”; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English, “Irish English”; Kortmann, “Synopsis”; Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
64 Filppula, “Irish English”; Kortmann, “Synopsis”; Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
65 Harris, “The Grammar of Irish English”; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English, “Irish English”; König and Siemund, “Locally Free Self-forms”; Siemund, “Varieties of English.”
66 Harris, “The Grammar of Irish English,” 147.
67 Macafee and Ó Baoill, “Why Scots is not a Celtic English”; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English.
68 Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English, 82, (85).
69 Chiang, “Hierarchical Phrase-based Translation”; Merchant, “Variable Island Repair under Ellipsis”; Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns.”
70 An anonymous reviewer pointed out that unbound reflexive examples in our paper can be taken to be analogous to those in (i) below: (i) The president himself will attend the meeting. He himself will come. We talked to (him) himself and his ministers. The reviewer provided us with some reasons for this claim. First, historically, English lost sik, its counterpart to the reflexives in other Germanic languages (e.g., zich in Dutch, sich in German, and seg in Swedish). After a short period of time when personal pronouns were used as markers for co-reference, the reflexive system was renewed in such a way that the emphatic marker self “same, self” was added and it was also used in a variety of compounds (selfcwalu “suicide”, selfdom “independence”). Later, forms like myself, yourself, and herself served dual function to mark either co-reference or emphasis/contrast. While he himself continued its use as an adnominal instance, him himself was simplified to himself, as exemplified in (i). Second, the examples discussed in our paper correspond in their forms and meanings almost exclusively to the analogous expressions that consist of personal pronouns and emphatic markers in other Germanic languages (e.g., zelf in Dutch, selbst in German, and själf in Swedish), as shown in the following:(ii) a. English: On behalf of myself and USAir, we would like to welcome you on board. b. Dutch: Namens mijzelf en USAir … c. German: Im Namen von USAir und mir selbst … d. Swedish: På uppdrag av mig själv och USAir … The reviewer indicated that examples like these have nothing to do with co-reference marking. We are thankful to the reviewer’s points and agree with them. Nevertheless, such reflexives in (i) above were excluded from our analysis. Most importantly, in our unbound reflexive examples the reflexive cannot find its antecedent within the 10 preceding words and the 10 following words unlike (i) as described in the Methods section. However, it is interchangeably used with a typical personal pronoun as illustrated in (11) and (20). In addition, it typically has an emphatic use. See König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms,” and König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms,” for the possibility of a uniform semantic analysis of unbound reflexives discussed in our paper and adnominal emphatic reflexives as in (8a) and (i).
71 We agree with the reviewer’s point in that the example in (26e) has very little to do with reflexivity. As we explained above, the reflexive has an emphatic use and we excluded examples like this, since they involve a reflexive which can find its antecedent within the 10 preceding words and the 10 following words as described in the Methods section.
72 As noted by an anonymous reviewer, examples like (26f) and (26g) can be subsumed under suitably changed Binding Conditions. For instance, the use of the reflexive himself in (26f) can be accounted for by the general Binding Conditions, if we assume that the expression in parentheses, describing the given situation, is paraphrased as a small clause with an overt subject, (Jeffrey saying to himself). In a similar manner, the use of the reflexive yourself in (26g) can be explained by the general Binding Conditions as well, once we assume that the implicit subject in the imperative clause is you. Of course, we excluded these examples from our analysis, since they do not involve unbound reflexives discussed in our paper.
73 The principal researchers also took a close look at each of the instances marked as “unbound” and performed an additional annotation process after the annotation by the undergraduate students. This was because some undergraduate students had trouble classifying unbound reflexives, which thus needed special attention in the present study.
74 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Hernández, “A Context Hierarchy of Untriggered Self-forms,” Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England; Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
75 For COHA data, we extracted only reflexive examples with a singular number value.
76 We only extracted reflexive examples with a singular number value from GloWbE, as with the COHA examples.
77 Statistical analysis also shows that the distribution of unbound and anaphoric reflexives in Irish English is significantly different from that in each of the other English varieties (p-value < 0.0001 for each comparison), and that their distribution in American English is also significantly different from that in each of the other English varieties (p-value < 0.0001 for each comparison). However, their distribution differences in some varieties do not reach statistical significance. For instance, the distributional differences in pairs like Australian and Canadian English (p-value = 0.2862), Australian and New Zealand English (p-value = 0.311), Canadian and New Zealand English (p-value = 0.4477), and British and New Zealand English (p-value = 0.5812) are not statistically significant. These results thus indicate that among the inner-circle varieties of English, Irish and American varieties form the two extremes on a continuum scale with respect to the use of unbound reflexives in relation to anaphoric ones in coordination structures, with the other varieties in between.
78 Harris, “The Grammar of Irish English”; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English, “Irish English”; Kortmann, “Synopsis”; Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
79 Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; Wales, Personal Pronouns; König and Siemund, “Intensifiers and Reflexives,” “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Hernández, “A Context Hierarchy of Untriggered Self-forms,” Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England; Hole, “Accounting for Unpredictable Self-forms”; Keenan, “Explaining the Creation of the Reflexive Pronouns”; König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms”; Lange, “Reflexivity and Intensification”; Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
80 Carroll, “Reflexives and the Dependency Relation “R””; Parker et al., “Untriggered Reflexive Pronouns”; König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms”; Hernández, “A Context Hierarchy of Untriggered Self-forms,” Personal Pronouns in the Dialects of England; Song, “A Corpus Study of Unbound Reflexive Pronouns”; Paterson, “You Can Just Give Those Documents to Myself.”
81 Harris, “The Grammar of Irish English”; Filppula, The Grammar of Irish English, “Irish English”; Kortmann, “Synopsis”; Siemund et al., “Reflexive and Intensive Self-forms.”
82 Of course, this will be clearer if we investigate the frequencies of unbound reflexives in the non-coordinated subject NP position in the six inner-circle varieties of English, an issue left for future research.
83 We should admit that it is out of the scope of this paper to provide a semantic analysis of our unbound reflexive examples and we leave it for future research to discuss the plausibility of a uniform semantic analysis of unbound reflexives in our paper and adnominal emphatic reflexives proposed in König and Siemund, “The Development of Complex Reflexives and Intensifiers,” “Locally Free Self-forms,” and König and Gast, “Reflexive Pronouns and Other Uses of Self-forms,” for instance, based on a large amount of corpus data with statistical analysis. It will surely help to develop the theory of use of reflexives in general.