English grammar innovation? New reflexive pronouns?

[David Costa]

Both 'themself' and 'theirselves' have been around a while. I first  
noticed 'themself' in the '80s and might even use it myself.  
'Themself' presumably arose as a result of the use of 'they' as a  
gender-neutral 3rd person singular pronoun. Also note that 'themself'  
gets 1.7 million Google hits.

It's discussed some here: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004285.html

Dave Costa

>
> Dear Colleagues,
>
> 	In my English grammar class a few days ago my undergraduates  
> claimed to have two reflexive pronouns that I have never heard  
> before.  I wonder how wide-spread this is, or what other comments  
> you might have about it.
> 	The first is "themself", used for collective nouns.  The example  
> was "The team really hurt themself by not cooperating more."  We're  
> already ambivalent about number agreement in collectives (observe:  
> "The team is playing well this year -- I hope they keep it up" with  
> singular verb agreement but plural for the anaphoric pronoun), so  
> this seems like a reasonable development.
> 	The second is "theirselves", which for these kids, at least,  
> contrasts with "themselves".  "The class taught theirselves the  
> lesson" is said to mean that they got together in little groups or  
> otherwise informally mixed and helped each other learn.  This is  
> different from "The class taught themselves the lesson", in which  
> each person taught him or herself, without cooperation, and also  
> different from "the class taught each other the lesson", in which  
> there has to be more deliberate one-to-one interaction.  I have no  
> idea how to label this one.
> `	There are probably dialect differences across the Atlantic, too,  
> since British speakers use plural verbs with collectives much more  
> readily than we do ("the team are playing well this year" is very  
> marginal for me, but easily accepted in England, I'm told).
> 	Is there a new "University of Colorado undergraduate" dialect of  
> English evolving, or have I just not been keeping up?  Seems like  
> the contrast collective/indivduated may be expanding its grammatical  
> effects.
>
> Best,
> 	David
>
>
>
> David S. Rood
> Dept. of Linguistics
> Univ. of Colorado
> 295 UCB
> Boulder, CO 80309-0295
> USA
> rood at colorado.edu