accusative cursing

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

On Apr 8, 2007, at 7:41 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:

> Sants pruh-zarve us! How soon they forget! When I was a kid in the
> 'Forties, this use of    "-self" in cartoons, comics, movies, and on
> radio shows to indicate that someone was Irish was as common as the
> use of "gwine" to show that someone was black. Stereotypical
> Irishwomen always referred to their husbands as "himself," for
> example.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 4/8/07, James Harbeck <jharbeck at sympatico.ca> wrote:
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>> -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       James Harbeck <jharbeck at SYMPATICO.CA>
>> Subject:      Re: accusative cursing
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ----------
>>
>> Seems like yet another Latin-derived model being applied
>> inappropriately -- interpreting "self" as strictly a reflexive...

i realize that this is going to sound extremely cranky, but there is
absolutely no reason to think (without significant evidence) that one
use of reflexives that is not prescriptively standard has anything to
do with any other use of reflexives that is not prescriptively
standard (or, indeed, that all the prescriptively standard uses hang
together as a single phenomenon).  the reflexive is just a set of
forms available in the language.  it's "just stuff", as i say a lot.
different groups of people do different things with it (and
individual people do different things with it in different
contexts).  these are quite often historically and socially
distinct;  all they share is a bit of linguistic stuff.

every single time i have written about reflexives that are not
prescriptively standard, someone has written to me about the irish
uses (which i have, of course, been aware of for at least fifty
years).  maybe there are connections in some cases, but, frankly, i
have yet to see a clear case.  all that the examples share is the bit
of formal stuff, which is the slimmest of connections.  (bits of
formal stuff do huge numbers of different things, especially for
different speakers.  think, in english, of all the things that r-
lessness can do, or creaky voice, or the present participle, or
accusative case, or wh-words, or missing constituents, or fronting of
a constituent within a clause.)

it's a piece of folk linguistics that any given feature comes with
its individual "meaning" or use, common to all of its occurrences.
this is just wrong. (there can be unappreciated commonalities, but
these have to be demonstrated.  and when you can demonstrate them,
that's wonderful.  but you should expect multi-functionality.)  it's
distressing to me to see linguists thinking one-form-one-use in a
crude fashion.

arnold

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