non-reflexive "myself"

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Aug 25, 2006, at 9:08 AM, Nathan Bierma wrote:

> This was asked about in June 02 on ASD-L but not responded to:
> - Send the document to Bob and myself.I decided to try to do a
> column on it
> after hearing this:
>
> - "The decision to take action was an operational matter, but was
> taken with
> the full knowledge of the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister
> and the
> Secretary of State for Transport, as well as myself." --Michael
> Chertoff, Aug.
> '06
>
> The use of "myself" to replace "me" seems like a reasonable nod to
> modesty and
> possibly formality. The one treatment of this I'm aware of is Katie
> Wales in
> her "Personal Pronouns in Present-Day English" (Cambridge UP,
> 1996), where she
> concludes:
>
>>> Evasions some of them most probably are ... But it is noteworthy
>>> that all
> the examples in both (i) and (ii) involved the "inter-personal"
> pronouns of
> addresser-addressee relations. The 'self'-forms appear more polite and
> deferential than the simple pronouns, and it may well be that the
> physical
> 'length' of them, however 'inelegant' they may be appear in such
> contexts (see
> Greenbaum and Whitcut 1988: 114), is symbolic here of a degree of
> indirectness.
> ...  [Wales, p. 195]
>
> I confess I haven't checked CGEL yet on this. In the meantime,
> affirmations,
> disputes, or addenda to Wales' observations?

CGEL, sec. 3.1.4 ("Override reflexives") of ch. 17, starting on p.
1494. notice that CGEL, in common with almost all grammarians, uses
"reflexive" as the name of a form, and refers to the various uses of
reflexive pronouns by other terms (CGEL's "basic reflexives",
"override reflexives", and "emphatic uses of reflexive pronouns";
others have other terminology).

CGEL notes that "myself" can avoid sticky problems with nominative/
accusative choice, especially in coordination and comparison.  it is
certainly very common in coordination, even in subject position; a
few examples from my collection:

Myself and many other scientists in the area [marine ecology] are
alarmed that...

Myself and all the other [radio] hosts are...

Myself and the other writers [on Arrested Development] all come from
situation comedy.

here the speakers are primarily referring to themselves, and the
others are viewed as extensions of the speakers.  so the first person
should come first in the coordination, but "I" is strongly disfavored
(prescriptively) as a first conjunct.  also, the first person pronoun
should bear significant accent, and "I" doesn't have a lot of
phonological substance for this purpose.  so "myself" is a good
choice on two different, though related, grounds.

I have plenty of examples from writing, some in pretty formal contexts.

"X and myself" also occurs with some frequency.  i haven't worked
through enough examples to see what's going on, but i think that
speakers are using both the choice of "myself" and the ordering of
conjuncts to convey subtle pragmatic differences, especially
differences in perspective, emphasis, and contrast.

that said, unanchored "myself" is one of the great bugbears of the
advice literature.  it's on almost everyone's Nasty List, usually
close to the top.  however, MWDEU and CGEL both point out that it's
very common, and are unwilling to dismiss it merely as a vulgar error.

some of the "myself" examples have an antecedent for the reflexive,
but one that's not eligible to serve as an antecedent for a basic
reflexive.  there are also third-person cases of this sort: "Ann
claimed that junior lecturers like herself were being exploited".
CGEL points out that in these cases, the antecedent
characteristically refers to the person whose perspective  is being
taken in the discourse.  in fact, the superior verb is quite often
one of speaking or thinking -- a fact that has led me (in a Language
Log posting and in a sci.lang posting) to connect these data to the
phenomenon of logophoricity.  (some languages have a special set of
pronouns for this purpose, and many use reflexive pronouns
logophorically.)

i'll send nathan files with examples and a file with my Language Log
and sci.lang postings.  if anyone else is interested, i'll ship these
items off to them too.

arnold

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