Timeline for Why is "herself" required in this particular sentence?
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| Jun 15, 2020 at 7:40 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
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| Aug 19, 2014 at 7:22 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @Wlerin the question asked about three specific cases. JK2's answer at least tried to address the three cases in point. It didn't for example start banging on about exophors or other irelevant labels. The examples were kept simple-ish for a reason. Although this is not a 'rule' it is as much a rule as anything which says that reflexive pronouns are only used when the antecedent is a subject and the pronoun an object!! Unfortunately, the bounty is allocated automatically when the time limit runs out. You'll notice though that I haven't 'ticked' the answer. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 20:49 | comment | added | Wlerin | At any rate, my main objection to your answer was that it received a bounty but was lacking in many respects. Since that bounty was awarded due to the, ah, idiosyncrasies of the system, I (mostly) withdraw my complaint. Your rule does cover the three examples he provided. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 20:13 | comment | added | JK2 | @Wlerin Well, Araucaria showed us only three exceptions to the subject/object rule, but I'm sure there are plenty more. Many of those numerous exceptions are then conveniently called "idioms", which by definition makes you an "idiot" for trying to figure them out. The new rule at least tries to subsume those exceptions including the so-called "idioms". | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:52 | comment | added | Wlerin | You are correct, but this one is not much more accurate than the subject/object definition you sought to replace, and I think it's a little misleading about why this is the case. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:50 | comment | added | JK2 | @Wlerin Not to blindly defend the rule, but aren't most existing grammar rules "an inaccurate generalization"? Actually, I have not come across a single grammar rule that is not "an inaccurate generalization". | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:44 | comment | added | Wlerin | That said, the only misleading part about the subject/object definition is the requirement that the antecedent be a subject. The reflexive (but not intensive?) pronoun is always an object (or at any rate I cannot think of any standard use of the reflexive where it isn't, aside from possibly "I am myself" where it might as well be understood as an intensive). | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 19:40 | comment | added | Wlerin | Ah, I hadn't realised that. Never used bounties before. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 17:49 | comment | added | Wlerin | This is not a useful rule. I'm glad to see the comments bring out a few of the (not at all rare) exceptions (as well as a number of non-exceptions), but the bounty is misleading given just the answer itself. The rule is an inaccurate generalisation that tells us very little about how the reflexive/intensive pronouns are actually used. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 15:01 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | Also wanted to add some info on another reflexives question, but it was closed - so I asked this one! | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 14:59 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | Well, the rule on its own is a bit of a generalisation. There are other factors, such as what kind of preposition a pronoun might occur with (reflexives don't seem to be required after spatial prepositions He put the book down beside him), also certain types of noun phrases seem to set up their own spaces within clauses - others don't. I asked the question hoping for a good non-highly technical explanation. Most questions about reflexives on SE get closed or migrated - people don't realise how complex they are, or get hung up on 'non-standard' usage.. Same clause stipulation is in CaGEL :) | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 1:01 | comment | added | JK2 | @Araucaria, If you knew about the 50-year-old rule already, why did you ask this question in the first place? Is the rule found in CGEL as well? | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 0:57 | comment | added | JK2 | @Araucaria, thank you for awarding me the bounty. Not that I really care but it feels rewarding nevertheless. Actually I thank you more for appreciating and supporting the single-clause rule, which I spent hours developing. I happen to have a copy of CGEL but haven't had the chance to read the part yet, but I will. | |
| Aug 18, 2014 at 0:32 | history | edited | JK2 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 17, 2014 at 20:19 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @bobie I'm afraid 'the rule' wasn't made up. It's about 50 years old or more, and very famous. JK2 is just rather good at analysing grammar and happened to come up with the same 'rule' themselves. The situation's a tad more complicated than JK2 suggests, but their answer's a whole lot better than one or two specific others on this page ... They also understood how to address the question. | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 20:08 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @bobie ... whereas in your second MJ photo example in these comments, your two him occurrences are not co-referential, they refer to different people. They second one does not, therefore, need to be reflexive. You understand that, right? | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 20:08 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @bobie OK, let's go very slowly. A normal pronoun does not need an antecedent in its own sentence. It does not need any antecedent in the text at all. So a normal pronoun like him could have an antecedent in a different sentence, a different clause, or the entity it refers to might be deducible from the context (ie it might be exophoric). However, if a pronoun is co-referential with another noun or pronoun within the same minimal clause (apart from in very specific situations), then it must be reflexive. In your original MJ photo example, himself is co-referential with him... | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 14:24 | comment | added | user88080 | @Araucaria, "bobie Erm, the antecedent is him, and it is, erm, within the same clause: I gave him a picture of himself." Araucaria that doesn't matter, also here the antecedent is him: "My son John found many pictures in a box. He liked Michel Jackson. I gave him a picture of him (shall we add -self?)". Can't you get it yet? | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 14:21 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | Or, alternatively, if you're interested, you could look up Principle A of Government and Binding theory on the web. Any page from a university website will be accurate enough ... :) | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 14:17 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | @bobie Erm, the antecedent is him, and it is, erm, within the same clause: I gave him a picture of himself. | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 12:48 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | I've given you the bounty, because it has to be awarded, otherwise it will get distributed automatically. However, it would be very good for readers here if you could make explicit the minimal clause stipulation. The answers to these questions are actually a bit more complex than what you've proposed - but your observation is nonetheless closer to the actual situation than other answers on the site make out :) If you're interested in this question, then you could look at CaGEL 2002 p. 1483-1499 | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 11:56 | comment | added | user88080 | @JK2, the rule seems made up just for the 3 examples, which are intrinsically different. It is not a rule. Take:" When he came round yesterday, my son found some pictures taken when he was about 8. They brought back long-forgotten memories. I gave him a picture of himself", here the antecedent is not in the same clause and not even in the same sentence. | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 11:31 | history | bounty ended | Araucaria - Him | ||
| Aug 17, 2014 at 11:02 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | If you put in more clearly that it's got to be a minimal clause, ie the smallest one the words are in, - then the bounty's yours. Ie should be clear why: 'Jane thinks Bob doesn't like her' doesn't need a reflexive, but 'Jane gave both Sarah and herself the benefit of the doubt' does. | |
| Aug 17, 2014 at 10:39 | history | edited | JK2 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 16, 2014 at 15:06 | comment | added | JK2 | I mean what I say. I said 'the same clause', so it's the same clause. If you were to apply the same-clause rule to a larger clause incorporating another clause within, there'd be no point in putting the 'same clause' limitation in the first place. So, in your first example, "John forgave those" and "who forgave him" are separate clauses. | |
| Aug 16, 2014 at 14:59 | comment | added | JK2 | AS for "prior" it doesn't necessarily mean the literal order of the clause. In your preposed example, 'he' is prior to 'By himself' because you think of 'he' when you say 'by himself'. | |
| Aug 16, 2014 at 14:44 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | Also do you mean the smallest clause that the word occurs in? Or the largest (often one clause is embedded within another). For example we can have: John forgave those who forgave him. Here we don't need a reflexive for him because the antecedent does not occur within the same minimal clause. (They are of course though both in the larger clause constituting the sentence itself.) But with John forgave himself a reflexive is needed because the antecedent and the reflexive pronoun occur within the same minimal clause. | |
| Aug 16, 2014 at 14:38 | comment | added | Araucaria - Him | When you say 'prior' do you mean a word higher up in the structure of the sentence? (So it won't affect the situation if, for example, some element is preposed: By himself, he was happy | |
| Aug 16, 2014 at 6:20 | history | edited | JK2 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 16, 2014 at 2:23 | history | edited | JK2 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
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| Aug 15, 2014 at 16:27 | history | answered | JK2 | CC BY-SA 3.0 |