Reflexive pronoun


A reflexive pronoun is a pronoun that refers to another noun or pronoun within the same sentence.
In the English language specifically, a reflexive pronoun will end in -self or -selves, and refer to a previously named noun or pronoun. English intensive pronouns, used for emphasis, take the same form.
In generative grammar, a reflexive pronoun is an anaphor that must be bound by its antecedent. In a general sense, it is a noun phrase that obligatorily gets its meaning from another noun phrase in the sentence. Different languages have different binding domains for reflexive pronouns, according to their structure.

Origins and usage of reflexive pronouns

In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, some distinction exists between normal object and reflexive pronouns, mainly in the third person: whether one says "I like me" or "I like myself", there is no question that the object is the same person as the subject; but, in "They like them", there can be uncertainty about the identity of the object unless a distinction exists between the reflexive and the nonreflexive. In some languages, this distinction includes genitive forms: see, for instance, the Danish examples below. In languages with a distinct reflexive pronoun form, it is often gender-neutral.
A reflexive pronoun is normally used when the object of a sentence is the same as the subject. Each personal pronoun has its own reflexive form:
  • I — myself
  • thou — thyself/thyselves
  • he — himself
  • she — herself
  • it — itself
  • we — ourselves
  • you — yourself/yourselves
  • they — themself/themselves
  • one — oneself
These pronouns can also be used intensively, to emphasize the identity of whomever or whatever is being talked about:
  • Jim bought himself a book
  • Jim himself bought a book
Intensive pronouns usually appear near and/or before the subject of the sentence.
Usually, after prepositions of locality it is preferred to use a personal object pronoun rather than a reflexive pronoun:
  • Close the door after you.
  • He was pulling a small cart behind him.
  • She took her dog with her.
Compare:
  • She's very pleased with herself.
Certain verbs have reflexive pronouns in some languages but not in English:
  • Do you shave on Sundays?
  • Try to concentrate.
  • I feel strange.
Compare to French:
  • Te rases-tu le dimanche ?
  • Essaie de te concentrer.
  • Je me sens étrange.
The list of such verbs:
  • ''acclimatize, adapt, behave, complain, concentrate, hide, get up/hot/tired, lie down, meet, move, relax, remember, shave, sit down, undress, wake up, wash...''

    Non-reflexive usage in English

Non-reflexive use of reflexive pronouns is rather common in English. Most of the time, reflexive pronouns function as emphatic pronouns that highlight or emphasize the individuality or particularity of the noun. Grammatically, the position of reflexive pronouns in this usage is either right after the noun the pronouns are emphasizing or, if the noun is subject, after-verb-or-object position is also possible. For example, "Why don't you yourself do the job?", "Why don't you do the job yourself?", or "I want to fix my phone itself; I will not fix your watch as well."
Some speakers use reflexive pronouns without local linguistic antecedents to refer to discourse participants or people already referenced in a discourse: for example, "Please, forward the information to myself, Anything else for yourself today?" Within the linguistics literature, reflexives with discourse antecedents are often referred to as logophors. Standard English allows use of logophors in some contexts: for example, "John was angry. Embarrassing pictures of himself were on display." However, within Standard English, this logophoric use of reflexives is generally limited to positions where the reflexive does not have a coargument. The newer non-standard usage does not respect this limitation. In some cases, reflexives without local antecedents may be better analyzed as emphatic pronouns without any true reflexive sense.
It is common in some dialects of English to use standard object pronouns to express reflexive relations, especially in the first and sometimes second persons, and especially for a recipient: for example, "I want to get me some supper." While this was seemingly standard in Old English through the Early Modern Period, it is held to be dialectal or nonstandard in Modern English.
It is also common in informal speech to use myself in a conjunctive phrase when 'me' would suffice: "She stood by Jane and myself." Also myself is used when 'I' would also be appropriate; for example, Thomas Jefferson was quoted as saying, "Hamilton and myself were daily pitted in the cabinet like two cocks."

In languages other than English

Chinese

In Mandarin Chinese, the reflexive pronoun is, meaning "self". The antecedent it refers to can be inferred by context, which is generally the subject of the sentence:
  • 。
  • 。
The antecedent can be reiterated before the reflexive pronoun; this can be used to refer to an antecedent that's not the subject:
  • 。
  • 。
Like English, the reflexive can also be used to emphasize the antecedent:
  • 。
The reflexive can also be the subject of an embedded clause.
  • 。
Also unlike English, the reflexive can refer to antecedents outside of the embedded clause. Because of this, it may be ambiguous whether the antecedent refers to the subject of the main clause or the embedded clause, in which case it may be necessary to reiterate the antecedent:
  • 。
  • 。
The reflexive pronoun in Cantonese Chinese, jihgéi, cognate to Mandarin zìjǐ, also follows the same rules. This was also the case in Classical Chinese, which simply used 己.

Danish

uses the separate reflexive pronoun sig for third person pronouns, and 'selv' to mark intensive.
  • Jeg beskytter mig.
In Danish, there is also a difference between normal and reflexive genitives, the latter being used only in the singular:
  • Anna gav Maria hendes bog.
  • Anna gav Maria sin bog.
In the latter case, sin is a case of a reflexive possessive pronoun, i.e. it reflects that the subject in the phrase owns the object.

Esperanto

The Esperanto third-person reflexive pronoun is si, or sia for the possessive.
  • Li legas liajn librojn.
  • Li legas siajn librojn.

    French

In French, the main reflexive pronoun is 'se', with its indefinite form soi.
There are also intensifying reflexive pronouns, such as moi-même, toi-même, lui-même/elle-même/soi-même, nous-mêmes, vous-mêmes and eux-mêmes/elles-mêmes, similar in meaning to myself, yourself, etc.
French also uses reflexive verbs to express actions that somebody is doing to themselves. Many of these are related to daily routine. For example,
In German, the reflexive case is not distinguishable from the accusative and dative cases except in the third person reflexive. As discussed above, the reflexive case is most useful when handling third person because it is not always clear that pronouns refer to the same person, whereas in the first and second persons, it is clear: he hit him and he hit himself have different meanings, but I hit me and I hit myself mean the same thing although the former is nonstandard English.
Because the accusative and dative cases are different, the speaker must know whether the verb is reflexive accusative or reflexive dative. There are very few reflexive dative verbs, which must be memorised to ensure that the correct grammar is used. The most notable one is weh tun : Ich tue mir weh. See also German pronouns. The genetive form of the reflexive pronoun sein is effectively lost as it has drifted in meaning to mean specifically 'his'.

Hindi/Urdu

In Hindi, there are two primary reflexive pronouns, the reflexive pronoun खुद meaning "self" and pronoun अपना which is the possessive reflexive pronoun and both these pronouns are used with all the three, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd, persons. There is also the pronoun आपस which is used with either the inessive case-marker में forming the reflexive pronoun आपस में meaning "among ourselves" or the genitive postpostion का forming the reflexing pronoun आपस का meaning "of ourselves". The genitive reflexive pronoun can also be used to emphasise when used with the personal genitive pronouns, so e.g. मेरा "mine" becomes मेरा अपना "my very own". Alternatively, using the genitive postposition का with खुद gives मेरे खुदका meaning the same as मेरा अपना.
These reflexive pronouns can be used with case-marking postpositions as shown below in the table to the right.

Hungarian

Hungarian has two primary means of expressing reflexivity.

Mag-

The most common is by means of the stem mag- which behaves much like standard postpositions and case endings in Hungarian in that it can take the six personal suffixes to form the following personal pronouns:
  • magam
  • magad
  • maga
  • magunk
  • magatok
  • maguk
Thus formed, these reflexive pronouns are in the nominative case and can take any case ending or postposition: magamnak, magunk előtt, magát. However the accusative case marking -t is often omitted in magamat, and magadat remaining magam and magad respectively. This is also the case with possessed nouns using the same personal endings e.g. házam, and kocsid both of which can be interpreted in less formal language as either nominative or accusative depending on context. Nonetheless, using the accusative ending -t is still considered formal and correct.
Relfexive pronouns in the nominative case exist but have no logical reflexive function. Rather they have an intensifying purpose and follow the subject :
  • ő maga csinálta
  • a kutya maga ásta a gödröt
  • magam is így gondoltam
note the absence of non-reflexive subject pronoun in the latter case where the verb marking implies the subject. In order to intensify a relfexive pronoun in any other case, i.e. a reflexive pronoun with a genuine reflexive grammatical function the word saját is added before the reflexive pronoun:
  • saját magának okoz gondot.