Ourself and Themself: Grammar as expressive choice

Publication date: Available online 7 June 2019Source: LinguaAuthor(s): Nancy SternAbstractPrevious scholarly work on the pronouns ourself and themself describes them as variants of ourselves and themselves. In this paper, attested tokens of ourself and themself are examined, and the contexts in which they appear are analyzed. This analysis shows that these forms, and even some less frequent examples of other mixed-number self pronouns, occur where this combination of singular and plural morphology fits the communicative context. While prescriptive pressures limit their frequency, the existence of these data falsifies the claim that number morphology in self pronouns is grammatically constrained. Instead, the data show that the distribution of ourself and themself reflect expressive choices that speakers (and writers) make to facilitate communication, and provide support for a view of grammatical categories, even those commonly regarded as syntactically or semantically determined, as independent bearers of meaning. Speakers’ creativity in the use of these forms reveals the nature of the linguistic system, as well as its structure as a set of signals and meanings deployed by language users to meet their communicative goals.

Source: Lingua - June 8, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research