conundrum
Helen Halva
hhalva at MINDSPRING.COM
Sat May 5 20:48:31 UTC 2012
I am a native speaker of American English and was taught to use "myself"
only emphatically (I, myself, hate ice cream, although everyone else
likes it . . . ) and reflexively (I saw myself in the mirror), and
perhaps adjectivally (that might not be the right term) --- (myself
(being) a student, I could not count on a salary as the others could).
I was taught that the other usage you cite should be "me," not
"myself." That said, the usage of "myself" as a normal direct object is
quite old, at least in American English --- I think it was used by Ben
Franklin and others of that day.
HH
On 5/5/2012 4:04 PM, Patrick Corness wrote:
>
> There are some (to me) slightly puzzling uses of English by native
> speakers amongst this correspondence, presumably intended to assist
> non-native speakers.
> I beg to differ about Paul Gallagher's claim that, talking about
> factories, one cannot say:
> "We built a big one, an expensive one, and a pasta one." Paul writes:
>
> > Agreed. But nouns cannot be used with "one" the way adjectives can:
> > We built a big, expensive, pasta factory.
> > We built a big one, an expensive one, and a *pasta one.
>
>
> On the other hand, I also find the use of /myself /instead of the
> anticipated /me /incongruous in the following statement
>
>
> "Though you can, of course, always ask Paul Gallagher and myself
> and split the difference."
> cf:
>
> You can ask yourself
>
> I can ask myself
> You can ask *myself
>
>
> Patrick Corness
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Patrick Corness, Visiting Research Fellow
> Centre for Translation Studies, University of Leeds
> /blog/: patrickcorness.wordpress.com <http://patrickcorness.wordpress.com>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> > Date: Fri, 4 May 2012 15:58:54 +0100
> > From: John.Dunn at GLASGOW.AC.UK
> > Subject: Re:
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