Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Part of speech for non reflexive "oneself"



The words myself, yourself, himself and the like usually function as reflexive pronouns. However, they are also used in context that do not fulfill the common definitions of reflexive. Neither the "agent = patient" paradigm, nor the "agent = grammatical object" definition.





The author read the book himself.




What part of speech are those self referential words and why?


Answer



It’s an intensive or emphatic pronoun.



Per Wikipedia:





Intensive pronouns, also known as emphatic pronouns, re-emphasize a noun or pronoun that has already been mentioned. English uses the same forms as the reflexive pronouns; for example: I did it myself (contrast reflexive use, I did it to myself).



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