One of the main differences between English and the other Germanic languages concerns the reflexive system and intensifiers. Unlike the other Germanic languages, English has only one form for both the reflexive anaphor and the intensifier, namely himself (the masculine form of the 3rd person singular stands for the entire paradigm of English reflexive anaphors). The syntactic and semantic properties of himself are neither traceable back to the Old English pronominal system nor to the Old English intensifier, but establish themselves in Late Middle English and continue to develop throughout Early Modern English. My paper tries to account for such a peculiarity of English and the characteristics of himself in terms of grammaticalization processes. It is contended that the reflexive anaphor himself developed first as a disambiguating device in contexts where the Old English simple pronoun would be understood as a marker of disjoint reference (prototypical transitive predicates), and that later it was grammaticalized into a coreference marker, similarly to what happens in Creoles.
Una delle principali differenze tra l’inglese e le altre lingue germaniche riguarda il sistema riflessivo e gli intensificatori. Contrariamente a quanto accade nelle altre lingue germaniche, l’inglese possiede una sola forma per codificare sia l’anafora riflessiva sia l’intensificatore, ovvero himself (la 3^ persona singolare maschile rappresenta qui l’intero paradigma). Le proprietà di himself non derivano dal sistema pronominale né dall’intensificatore anglosassoni. Si stabilizzano, invece, durante il tardo inglese medio per svilupparsi pienamente nel primo inglese moderno. In questo articolo si cerca di fornire una spiegazione sia alla posizione particolare che l’inglese occupa nell’ambito delle lingue germaniche sia alle caratteristiche proprie di himself in termini di grammaticalizzazione. Si ritiene, infatti, che himself si sia sviluppata in un primo momento come espediente di disambiguazione in quei contesti in cui il semplice pronome personale sarebbe stato interpretato come marca di referenza disgiunta (ovvero con i predicati prototipicamente transitivi) e che successivamente si sia grammaticalizzata in marca di coreferenza, in modo alquanto simile a quello che avviene nelle lingue creole.
(2003). Where himself comes from [journal article - articolo]. In LINGUISTICA E FILOLOGIA. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/10446/231
Where himself comes from
2003-01-01
Abstract
One of the main differences between English and the other Germanic languages concerns the reflexive system and intensifiers. Unlike the other Germanic languages, English has only one form for both the reflexive anaphor and the intensifier, namely himself (the masculine form of the 3rd person singular stands for the entire paradigm of English reflexive anaphors). The syntactic and semantic properties of himself are neither traceable back to the Old English pronominal system nor to the Old English intensifier, but establish themselves in Late Middle English and continue to develop throughout Early Modern English. My paper tries to account for such a peculiarity of English and the characteristics of himself in terms of grammaticalization processes. It is contended that the reflexive anaphor himself developed first as a disambiguating device in contexts where the Old English simple pronoun would be understood as a marker of disjoint reference (prototypical transitive predicates), and that later it was grammaticalized into a coreference marker, similarly to what happens in Creoles.File | Dimensione del file | Formato | |
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