English reflexives

[Strinka]

Ok, I don’t know the proper terms for everything I’m going to be describing so help would be appreciated with that.

There are four types of pronouns (that I’m talking about, I know there are different ways to categorize them.)
Something - I, we, he, she, they
Something else - me, us, him, her, them
possessive - my, our, his, her(s), their(s)
reflexive - myself, ourselves, himself, herself, themselves

reflexive being the possessive with ‘self’ stuck at the end makes sense. I am talking about my self. We are talking about our selves.

However! Himself and themselves are the something else pronouns with ‘self’ stuck at the end. He is not talking about him self, nor they about them selves. He is talking about his self and they are talking about their selves.

What gives?

[Shrinking_Violet]

Hmmmm … to my (UK English) ear, himself and themselves sounds correct; hisself and theirselves does not.

But I might be wrong - it has been known.

[Polycarp]

Language use only sometimes cares about logic or consistency.

What is the “it” which is precipitating in “It’s raining outside”?

Although “este arbol se llama <linden>”, I doubt very strongly that the linden tree calls itself anything, in Spanish or otherwise (Entish perhaps being an exception! :D)

The reflexive pronouns and their mode of formation are no different: myself, thyself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves (the one instance where “you” differs in singular and plural), and themselves. There is no real consistency in how they’re formed. (BTW, the rarest pronoun usage in English is attributed, perhaps apocryphally, to Queen Victoria: “We ourself will…” And she was accurate – the -self/-selves usage does differentiate, so that the “royal we,” being logically singular while using the first-person-plural verb, takes -self, not -selves.

[Cunctator]

The classification of pronouns that I was taught at school was:

Subject - I, you, he, she, it, we, you, they
Object - me, you, him, her, it, us, you, them
Possessive - mine, yours, his, hers, its, ours, yours, theirs
Reflexive - myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves

All of the reflexive pronouns are spelt as a single word.

[Scarlett67]

A little Googling (for the OP made me curious as well) on “etymology reflexive pronouns hisself” produced this (bolding mine):

In the matter of the reflexive pronouns the American vulgate exhibits forms which plainly show that it is the spirit of the language to regard self, not as an adjective, which it is historically, but as a noun. This confusion goes back to Anglo-Saxon days; it originated at a time when both the adjectives and the nouns were losing their old inflections. Such forms as Petrussylf (=Peter’s self), Cristsylf (=Christ’s self) and Icsylf (=I, self) then came into use, and along with them came combinations of self and the genitive, still surviving in hisself and theirselves (or theirself). Down to the sixteenth century these forms remained in perfectly good usage. “Each for hisself,” for example, was written by Sir Philip Sidney, and is to be found in the dramatists of the time, though modern editors always change it to himself. How the dative pronoun got itself fastened upon self in the third person masculine and neuter is one of the mysteries of language, but there it is, and so, against all logic, history and grammatical regularity, himself, themselves and itself (not its-self) are in favor today.

So at least according to Mencken, nodody knows. English is a marvelously nonsensical language, she is.

[Giles]

Also possible are “oneself” and “themself” – the latter being used when you are using “they” and a gender-free singular pronoun. For example, “A host should serve their guests before serving themself.” Of course, some do not like “themself”

[Loopus]

In dialect, you will sometimes hear “his self” and “their selves,” especially when “own” is put in the middle (as in “Why can’t he do it his own self?”). I do it myself sometimes.

[Shrinking_Violet]

:smack: Reading through the thread again, I realise I completely misunderstood the OP.

Well, it was late … I was tired …

Ahem. :o

[TJdude825]

WAG: The two S’s next to each other were too clashy. Say “his self” 10 times fast and it comes out like “hiself.” Maybe this is how it ended up being “himself” – people couldn’t handle all that ‘S’-ness. I think this is the same basic reason “important” is a word instead of “inportant.”

[Steve-o-B]

@Giles

Also possible are “oneself” and “themself” – the latter being used when you are using “they” and a gender-free singular pronoun. For example, “A host should serve their guests before serving themself.” Of course, some do not like “themself”

I discovered, to my surprise, that Word will not let me type “themself”. It autocorrects it to “themselves”. So, apparently, Micro$oft in among the “some” who “do not like ‘themself’”. But I NEVER would have written “hisself”. I know, that was really fascinating.

[Polycarp]

@Loopus

In dialect, you will sometimes hear “his self” and “their selves,” especially when “own” is put in the middle (as in “Why can’t he do it his own self?”). I do it myself sometimes.

They’re considered substandard, though acceptable in certain areas as colloquial English. Never used in formal written English, however.

[Excalibre]

@TJdude825

WAG: The two S’s next to each other were too clashy. Say “his self” 10 times fast and it comes out like “hiself.” Maybe this is how it ended up being “himself” – people couldn’t handle all that ‘S’-ness. I think this is the same basic reason “important” is a word instead of “inportant.”

In the case of important, you’re right; it’s a type of assimilation; Latin had consistent rules for matching consonants when prefixes were applied to words.

That doesn’t explain “himself”, though. “Themselves” is formed the same way - the objective case of the pronoun rather than the possessive (in contrast to “myself”, “ourselves”, “yourself”), but there’s no phonetic motivation for it. Unless there was an analogy process that made people switch from “theirselves” to “themselves” because they had done so with “hisself”, while not also analogizing the first and second person forms, it’s not an adequate explanation. (Besides, “himself” seems like an unlikely way to avoid the phonetic difficulties of the long /s/ sound; why not simply say “hiself”?)

[moriah]

Consider the following table:

I       you/Thou         he      she     it      we         you         they
me      you/Thee         him     her     it      us         you         them
my(mine)your/Thy         his     her     its     our        your        their
myself  yourself/Thyself himself herself itself  ourselves  yourselves  theirselves
mine    yours/Thine      his     hers    --      ours       yours       theirs

mine    yourn/Thine      hisn    hern            ourn       yourn       theirn

The first line contains the nominative pronouns (the grammatical case of the subject of a sentence). Notice with the second person singular, the formal form of address is included (Thou), which is mostly archaic, aside from Shakespeare and the King James bible.

The second line contains the objective pronouns (the case of the (in)direct object of a sentence or preposition).

The first and second lines are nouns (yes, they are called pronouns because they take the place of a noun, but, still, they function exactly like nouns do).

The third line are adjectival pronouns, i.e., they act as adjectives, modifying another noun (or noun-phrase). They are the simple possessive pronouns, sometimes called the attributive possessive. Note that there is the archaic usage of changing ‘my’ to ‘mine’ in front of a noun beginning with a vowel (like a/an) as in, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…”

The fourth line are the reflexive pronouns. These take the place of the second line of objective pronouns when the subject is the same agent as the object… thus the ‘reflexive’ part. They are objective case, and function like nouns. “I gave myself a bath.” As noted earlier in the thread, himself is the oddball in that the objective pronoun of ‘him’ is used instead of the possessive form of ‘his.’ Odd.

Though, when using ‘self’ not as a reflexive suffix, but as a proper noun, as in, “What is his feelings toward his own identity and place in the world… how does he regard his self?” Then “his self” is OK.

The fifth line is what is called the absolute possessive pronouns or genitive possessives. Again, we have pronouns that function like true nouns. Two things to note:

First, there’s really no third person singular absolute possessive pronoun. No itss. <shrug> It’s not how we talk. Imagine this dialogue.

“Do you like the porridge the girl is holding?”
“Yes, I like hers. I’ll take hers.”
“Do you like the porridge the table is holding?”
“Yes, I like its. I’ll take its.”

We just don’t do that (normally). We’d say, “Yes, I like that. I really do like it. I’ll take the table’s.”

Second thing to note is that the first person (mine) and the second person formal (thine) end in the letter sound of ‘N’ rather than ‘S’. In fact, the use of the ‘N’ or ‘EN’ suffix to form the absolute possessive pronoun is older than the use of the ‘S’. The use of the ‘N’ not only survives in ‘mine’ and ‘thine,’ but if you look at the sixth line, certain regions of Southeast U.S. still use the ‘N’ suffix. I believe it pops up in Huckleberry Finn. While the rest of the country might think the ‘N’ is backwoods and backwards, it actually has a more ancient tradition!

Peace.

[Loopus]

@Polycarp

They’re considered substandard, though acceptable in certain areas as colloquial English. Never used in formal written English, however.

I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.

[Polycarp]

@Steve-o-B

… So, apparently, Micro$oft in among the “some” who “do not like ‘themself’”…

I would have never looked at Micro$oft as among those with low self esteem!!!

@excalibre

@TJdude825

WAG: The two S’s next to each other were too clashy. Say “his self” 10 times fast and it comes out like “hiself.” Maybe this is how it ended up being “himself” – people couldn’t handle all that ‘S’-ness. I think this is the same basic reason “important” is a word instead of “inportant.”

In the case of important, you’re right; it’s a type of assimilation; Latin had consistent rules for matching consonants when prefixes were applied to words.

I think it’s important to note the phonemic distinction in “hisself” – Like many English words ending in a vowel or voiced consonant plus S, the final sound of “his” is a /z/ – the voiced silibant. The initial sound of “self,” however, is /s/ – the unvoiced silibant, and this does not change when -self is used in compounds.

English tends to avoid that sort of swapping from one related sound to the other whenever possible, adapting one of the two sounds to the other; the reasons for this are irrelevant and immaterial. But “self” seems to be among the morphemes that is resistant to sound change (other than voicing the final fricative in the plural). So you’re left with a “hisself” that sounds like “hiss elf” (which should make almost any literate person think, “My Preciousssssss” :)) – and that just doesn’t sound right to English-speaking ears. The quasi-explanation quoted by Scarlett67 down the page – that many English compounding forms are relicts of the old dative-case endings, though why certain ones survived and others did not is unknown – may help to explain why the “himself” and “themselves” forms survived.

[Giles]

@moriah

First, there’s really no third person singular absolute possessive pronoun. No itss. <shrug> It’s not how we talk. Imagine this dialogue.

“Do you like the porridge the girl is holding?”
“Yes, I like hers. I’ll take hers.”
“Do you like the porridge the table is holding?”
“Yes, I like its. I’ll take its.”

We just don’t do that (normally). We’d say, “Yes, I like that. I really do like it. I’ll take the table’s.”

I don’t think this is a good example, because possession works differently for people than it does for animals, tables, and other things. If a person is holding some porridge, then it does make sense to talk about “her porridge”: in fact, in legal terms she “possesses” the porridge just by holding it, even if she doesn’t own it. However, if a table is holding some porridge, we don’t talk about “the table’s porridge”, because we don’t think of the table as possessing something.

However, we do talk about both people and tables possessing legs. So let’s change the example:
“Do you like the legs on that girl?”
“Yes, I like hers. I’ll take a picture of hers .”
“Do you like the legs on that table?”
“Yes, I like its. I’ll take a picture of its.”
It still doesn’t sound quite right to me, but it doesn’t sound as absurd as the porridge example. OED describes this use as rare, and gives just one quote:

@Shakespeare's Henry VIII

Each following day Became the next dayes master, till the last Made former Wonders, it’s.

(That’s the original puctuation, capitalisation, etc., of the First Folio).

So “its” in this sense is rare, but it is possible.

[Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus]

@Loopus

In dialect, you will sometimes hear “his self” and “their selves,” especially when “own” is put in the middle (as in “Why can’t he do it his own self?”). I do it myself sometimes.

But also, in dialect, and in archaic English, you’ll find where just the normal objective case of the pronoun serves as the reflexive, as is the case in German today. For instance in the JKV Bible there’s this:

@KJV Bible

“14”: Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch.

and this:

@JKV Bible

“19”: And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah.

to name just two examples, in addition to dialect constructions like, “I’m gonna get me a --”.

I don’t know the etymology of the word self or how it became a necessary part of the reflexive in English, but with these examples in mind, themselves and himself seem closer to the original way of using reflexives in English.

[Excalibre]

@moriah

Second thing to note is that the first person (mine) and the second person formal (thine) end in the letter sound of ‘N’ rather than ‘S’.

One piddling nitpick: the ‘thou’, ‘thee’ series was informal; “you” was formal or plural.

[Strinka]

Wow. Despite having read the Straight Dope for five months, I never expected such an in depth answer. Thanks!

[moriah]

@Excalibre

One piddling nitpick: the ‘thou’, ‘thee’ series was informal; “you” was formal or plural.

I stand corrected.

Peace.