"Us ourselves"

[Wilson Gray]

True, Mark, but we merely said that such forms seem strange, not that
we couldn't understand them.

-Wilson

On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 9:50 PM, Mark Mandel <thnidu at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>  Poster:       Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM>
>  Subject:      Re: "Us ourselves"
>  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
>  On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Arnold M. Zwicky
>  <zwicky at csli.stanford.edu> wrote:
>  > On Apr 22, 2008, at 10:29 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>  >  > From Slashdot:
>  >  > "[T]hey [PayPal] didn't respond to _us ourselves_ at all. [We had to
>  >  > hire a lawyer.]"
>  >  >
>  >  > I've never seen "us ourselves" before. Indeed, all cases of -self
>  >  > /-selves in this kind of construction seem rather odd. But, again,
>  >  > maybe that's just me.
>  >
>  >  yes, i find it odd too.  CGEL (p. 1497) gives two functions for NP-
>  >  modifier emphatic reflexives: emphasis (conveying roughly the same
>  >  thing as "no other than" and "no less than") and contrast, neither of
>  >  which seems possible in the example above;
>
>  Literally "no other than", though. = "didn't respond to us by
>  ourselves / to us on our own", as is made clear by the bracketed "[We
>
> had to hire a lawyer.]"
>
>  --
>  Mark Mandel
>
>
>
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
>  The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
 -Sam'l Clemens

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org