English grammar innovation? New reflexive pronouns?

[Anthony Grant]

David:

You can certainly hear both in Britain in less deliberate speech, and
plural concord with 'team' is widespread too.  I think 'theirselves' is
commoner than 'themself' here but both are available.

Anthony

>>> ROOD DAVID S <David.Rood at Colorado.EDU> 13/02/2011 18:49 >>>

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



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