The Korean(-American) passive "himself"?

[David Bowie]

From:    "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>

> From The New York Times, Wed. April 18, New England Final, 1/3, by
> Manny Fernandez and Marc Santora:

> "Mr. Cho's eruption of violence, in which 32 victims and himself were
> killed on the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire, was
> never directly signaled by his actions or words ... ".

> This construction is certainly awkward.  Was Cho killed by someone
> else, such as a police officer?  Were the other 32 killed by someone
> else?  Aha, the passive, which lets the columnists avoid assigning
> responsibility for the killings.

> The responsibility for the "himself" must rest with the authors, so
> perhaps it has become Hispanic-American.

FWIW, the "himself" in the quoted passage seems completely and utterly
acceptable to me (and except for some of the mixing that you get with
pretty much any Southern family that's been there long enough, i'm
thoroughly non-minority), and while this

> (There is an obvious alternative, which I know I saw and probably in
> the very same newspaper:  "in which he killed 32 victims and then
> himself on the Virginia Tech campus ...".)

works, as others have pointed out there's a difference in focus here.
The obvious directly analogous alternatives,

(a) Mr. Cho's eruption of violence, in which 32 victims and he were
     killed on the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire,
     was never directly signaled by his actions or words...
(b) Mr. Cho's eruption of violence, in which he and 32 victims were
     killed on the Virginia Tech campus here in a rampage of gunfire,
     was never directly signaled by his actions or words...

are less acceptable, though i wouldn't go so far as to label them
ungrammatical.

Apparently, here we simply have a case of barbarians at the gates--and i
am one of them.

--
David Bowie                               University of Central Florida
     Jeanne's Two Laws of Chocolate: If there is no chocolate in the
     house, there is too little; some must be purchased. If there is
     chocolate in the house, there is too much; it must be consumed.

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