I can't off the top of my head think of a sentence you couldn't reconstruct wihout the reflexive pronoun, but I doubt you could convince people to discontinue their use anyway, which makes it a little moot.
Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men and hang up them.
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
My initial thought was that so long as we can keep it for emphatic or literary uses -- like the passé litéraire in French? -- I don't mind banishing it from the everyday.
But what about cases where it is used correctly and sounds right? What do you do with "If a man of exalted rank chooses to disguise himself as a Second Trombone, he must take the consequences." (Arguably this is both emphatic and literary, but bear with me.) What do you replace "chooses to disguise himself" with? "Chooses to disguise him" sounds horribly wrong. So what would work there, if not a reflexive pronoun?
Not entirely. They have a specific purpose when used correctly, and can't really be replaced with anything else.
"She sees her" does not mean the same thing as "She sees herself". If you can't use "herself", "she sees her" is ambiguous because nobody knows whether "she" and "her" are the same person or two different people. (This is the bane of same-sex romance writers everywhere.)
"Please, forward the information to myself" is a case of the speaker thinking bigger words are automatically classier. It's like saying "this task is actionable" instead of "this task needs to be done". It smells like corporate doublespeak.
But we've both seen enough debates about grammar, and improper use thereof, over in ffrants. ;)
Yeah, yeah...evolving language, blah, blah, blah. But if you strip the meaningful distinction between "me" and "myself" away under the guise of "evolving language", there ceases to be a need for "myself", so you're killing the word through misuse.
I think you're agreeing with me... if people understand the importance of the distinction, they'll use it properly, and avoid killing it through misuse.
I try to stay away from ffrants these days. It was causing logic shrinkage.
I've heard you argue this before, and in the context of this discussion, I think I've finally figured out what I disagree with.
In this particular example, if you use 'she' and 'herself' consistently and by the existing rules, you are able to communicate certain things that you can't communicate otherwise. 'She pinched her' and 'she pinched herself' mean two different things, and if you understand those meanings, a reader who knows the rules can tell which one you meant when you wrote it. If you don't use them by the rules, you lose some of the language's specificity. The sentence 'she pinched her' now needs more words or more context in order to be clear.
Standardized language lets people communicate clearly and specifically. If it's abandoned, the first place you'll start to see this 'evolution' is between different classes of society, because richer communities get better schools. Poor people will have one language (with more 'evolution') and rich people will have another. That would very effectively prevent the poor from making themselves heard and their problems understood by others, and it would also put them further away from being able to read things that were written by people from other places.
Now that we have the internet, we have an amazing capability for ideas to be shared from one class to another and from one country to another. If we don't have standardized language, we put further blocks in the way of that kind of communication. We should be taking the opportunity to slow the degradation of language, accepting new words and new usages without forgetting the old ones.
I almost agree. Every English speaker can benefit from learning standard English.
But. "Standard" is not "better". It is just a standard. As I read somewhere recently, I shouldn't go to a job interview wearing a t-shirt. But that doesn't mean there's something intrinsically wrong with t-shirts. So nonstandard usages like "Please, forward the information to myself" are inappropriate for edited text, but that doesn't mean they're somehow linguistically inferior.
I don't know whether English will change to remove the distinction you mention. But if it happens, it won't be the first time language change has removed a distinction - with the loss of "thou" we lost a distinction between singular and plural second person. And yet English survived!
Language doesn't degrade, that's just false. Well ok, it can degrade when the number of speakers is sufficiently reduced. It's called "language death" and is happening to North American aboriginal languages. But English is in no danger of that.
On reflexion, I'm sceptical that the distinction between object pronouns and reflexive pronouns would be lost. They are strongly marked in all languages I'm aware of... but then I don't know many languages that well.
some discussion on the subject by the experts http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002774.html
Some of the posters think it's ungrammatical, some think it might be grammatical in certain dialects. But either way, there's no worry that it will lead to any kind of degradation.
I think dogmatically accepting "standard is not better" is just as silly as dogmatically accepting "standard is better". In some cases one is true, in some cases the other, and in some cases neither.
Even in the case of language, standard isn't always better for everything. There's nothing wrong with speaking in dialect among other people who understand it, or in other informal situations. There may be concepts that can be expressed in certain dialects that just have no equivalents in the Queen's English. Even in academic writing, you may have to quote speakers of dialect in order to communicate the idea. This could actually lead to the word being adopted into standard language. And of course you've always got people who point to someone's non-standard dialect as "proof" that he is inferior, which is completely irrational, so that's another case where standard is not an indicator of superiority.
In cases where the non-standard usage is coming from the general public's ignorance of the subtle meanings, and I can think of quite a few of them, non-standard is inferior because it hinders understanding. ("Forward the information to myself" is not itself ambiguous, but the misunderstanding that may be behind it is a problem.) Changing usages like "where he be?" instead of "where is he?" are not harmful because they're unambiguous.
I don't know if "degrade" has a specific linguistic meaning, and if it does, I stand corrected. But when one language splits into separate languages because of class distinctions, and results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate with each other, there must be a word for it, because that's not a good thing.
It doesn't make sense to say that one language or dialect is "better" than another. All languages are equally good at what they do. Any concept that can be expressed in one language can be expressed in all languages. I think most linguists would agree that there is no such thing as an untranslatable word.
I don't see how "Forward the information to myself" is the product of any serious misunderstanding; at worst it's just a mistake about what the reflexive should be referring to. Some of the Language Loggers do think that it's grammatical, but I need to brush up on my syntax to understand them.
And I don't see how "where he be?" is ambiguous, if that's what you're suggesting.
Would you say that Middle English is "better" than Modern English because it makes a distinction between singular and plural second person?
"degrade" doesn't have a specific linguistic meaning, but to me it suggests "become worse". And this is just not what languages do. Maybe what you're looking for is "language change". Language changes, and the change isn't good or bad, it's just change. It might have undesirable consequences, like one speech community stigmatizing another, but that's to do with social factors that are not purely linguistic. And since we have a standard English, change that results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate is not likely to happen.
It doesn't make sense to say that one language or dialect is "better" than another.
I think what I meant was that if one is identified as 'standard', it's to everyone's benefit to learn it regardless of what other dialect they speak.
I'm saying that "forward the information to myself" and "where he be" are not ambiguous. They're non-standard, but understandable without further clarification. The only problem with the first one is that it may be a result of a more serious misunderstanding. It's not a problem on its own.
Would you say that Middle English is "better" than Modern English because it makes a distinction between singular and plural second person?
No, because we have other standard ways of expressing the difference when we need to ("both of you", "just you", etc.). I'm not sure that applies in the reflexive pronoun example. There are other ways to do it, but depending on the context it can seem clumsy. Which, of course, is subjective in itself, but writers are generally told to learn how the standard language works before they mess around with alternatives, and I think that makes sense.
Language changes, and the change isn't good or bad, it's just change. It might have undesirable consequences...
Heh. Okay, fair enough. I'm arguing from a perspective of "value literacy, dammit", because we want to prevent these undesirable consequences.
And since we have a standard English, change that results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate is not likely to happen.
I'm really not so sure about that one. People can have difficulty comprehending unfamiliar dialects, even when they aren't being narrow-minded or actively refusing to understand. That's already happening, and if any of those people don't know standard English, communication is going to be difficult, especially when teaching standards vary as much as they do. There are still places in North America where classes and races keep to themselves.
I think what I meant was that if one is identified as 'standard', it's to everyone's benefit to learn it regardless of what other dialect they speak.
I agree with that.
The only problem with the first one is that it may be a result of a more serious misunderstanding. It's not a problem on its own.
The jury's out on what this violation of the "reflexives must have an antecedent in the same clause" rule means. It might be ungrammatical. It might be grammatical for some speakers. There are some definitely grammatical examples of this construction: "between ourselves" in the sense of "confidentially" is one. But I don't see the "serious misunderstanding." The confusion, if one exists, is purely grammatical.
My point is that it's nothing to be scared of, or angry about, or mocking of. If it moves into wider use, then it's probably grammatical. If it causes some change in English, well that's what languages do.
No, because we have other standard ways of expressing the difference when we need to ("both of you", "just you", etc.).
This is what I mean by "any concept can be expressed in any language." If a language loses a grammatical distinction, the speakers will find another way to express it if they need to.
I'm not sure that applies in the reflexive pronoun example. There are other ways to do it, but depending on the context it can seem clumsy. Which, of course, is subjective in itself, but writers are generally told to learn how the standard language works before they mess around with alternatives, and I think that makes sense.
I don't know much about writing. But I do know that the standard dialect (and prescriptive grammar) have little to do with clarity and precision. It's an accident of history that one dialect is standard and not another.
I'm really not so sure about that one.
Fair enough. I think that institutions like the BBC and mass media pretty much ensure that most English speakers will understand standard English. I guess it's an empirical question.
I mean grammatical and ungrammatical in the descriptive sense. Producing an ungrammatical utterance is not a measure of intelligence and needs no condemnation.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Myself...
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To what end?
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[1] yah, yah, I know. English evolves.
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Meriting mockings, perhaps.
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(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
My initial thought was that so long as we can keep it for emphatic or literary uses -- like the passé litéraire in French? -- I don't mind banishing it from the everyday.
But what about cases where it is used correctly and sounds right? What do you do with "If a man of exalted rank chooses to disguise himself as a Second Trombone, he must take the consequences." (Arguably this is both emphatic and literary, but bear with me.) What do you replace "chooses to disguise himself" with? "Chooses to disguise him" sounds horribly wrong. So what would work there, if not a reflexive pronoun?
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"She sees her" does not mean the same thing as "She sees herself". If you can't use "herself", "she sees her" is ambiguous because nobody knows whether "she" and "her" are the same person or two different people. (This is the bane of same-sex romance writers everywhere.)
"Please, forward the information to myself" is a case of the speaker thinking bigger words are automatically classier. It's like saying "this task is actionable" instead of "this task needs to be done". It smells like corporate doublespeak.
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But we've both seen enough debates about grammar, and improper use thereof, over in ffrants. ;)
Yeah, yeah...evolving language, blah, blah, blah. But if you strip the meaningful distinction between "me" and "myself" away under the guise of "evolving language", there ceases to be a need for "myself", so you're killing the word through misuse.
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I try to stay away from ffrants these days. It was causing logic shrinkage.
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In this particular example, if you use 'she' and 'herself' consistently and by the existing rules, you are able to communicate certain things that you can't communicate otherwise. 'She pinched her' and 'she pinched herself' mean two different things, and if you understand those meanings, a reader who knows the rules can tell which one you meant when you wrote it. If you don't use them by the rules, you lose some of the language's specificity. The sentence 'she pinched her' now needs more words or more context in order to be clear.
Standardized language lets people communicate clearly and specifically. If it's abandoned, the first place you'll start to see this 'evolution' is between different classes of society, because richer communities get better schools. Poor people will have one language (with more 'evolution') and rich people will have another. That would very effectively prevent the poor from making themselves heard and their problems understood by others, and it would also put them further away from being able to read things that were written by people from other places.
Now that we have the internet, we have an amazing capability for ideas to be shared from one class to another and from one country to another. If we don't have standardized language, we put further blocks in the way of that kind of communication. We should be taking the opportunity to slow the degradation of language, accepting new words and new usages without forgetting the old ones.
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But. "Standard" is not "better". It is just a standard. As I read somewhere recently, I shouldn't go to a job interview wearing a t-shirt. But that doesn't mean there's something intrinsically wrong with t-shirts. So nonstandard usages like "Please, forward the information to myself" are inappropriate for edited text, but that doesn't mean they're somehow linguistically inferior.
I don't know whether English will change to remove the distinction you mention. But if it happens, it won't be the first time language change has removed a distinction - with the loss of "thou" we lost a distinction between singular and plural second person. And yet English survived!
Language doesn't degrade, that's just false. Well ok, it can degrade when the number of speakers is sufficiently reduced. It's called "language death" and is happening to North American aboriginal languages. But English is in no danger of that.
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some discussion on the subject by the experts
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002774.html
Some of the posters think it's ungrammatical, some think it might be grammatical in certain dialects. But either way, there's no worry that it will lead to any kind of degradation.
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Even in the case of language, standard isn't always better for everything. There's nothing wrong with speaking in dialect among other people who understand it, or in other informal situations. There may be concepts that can be expressed in certain dialects that just have no equivalents in the Queen's English. Even in academic writing, you may have to quote speakers of dialect in order to communicate the idea. This could actually lead to the word being adopted into standard language. And of course you've always got people who point to someone's non-standard dialect as "proof" that he is inferior, which is completely irrational, so that's another case where standard is not an indicator of superiority.
In cases where the non-standard usage is coming from the general public's ignorance of the subtle meanings, and I can think of quite a few of them, non-standard is inferior because it hinders understanding. ("Forward the information to myself" is not itself ambiguous, but the misunderstanding that may be behind it is a problem.) Changing usages like "where he be?" instead of "where is he?" are not harmful because they're unambiguous.
I don't know if "degrade" has a specific linguistic meaning, and if it does, I stand corrected. But when one language splits into separate languages because of class distinctions, and results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate with each other, there must be a word for it, because that's not a good thing.
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I don't see how "Forward the information to myself" is the product of any serious misunderstanding; at worst it's just a mistake about what the reflexive should be referring to. Some of the Language Loggers do think that it's grammatical, but I need to brush up on my syntax to understand them.
And I don't see how "where he be?" is ambiguous, if that's what you're suggesting.
Would you say that Middle English is "better" than Modern English because it makes a distinction between singular and plural second person?
"degrade" doesn't have a specific linguistic meaning, but to me it suggests "become worse". And this is just not what languages do. Maybe what you're looking for is "language change". Language changes, and the change isn't good or bad, it's just change. It might have undesirable consequences, like one speech community stigmatizing another, but that's to do with social factors that are not purely linguistic. And since we have a standard English, change that results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate is not likely to happen.
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I think what I meant was that if one is identified as 'standard', it's to everyone's benefit to learn it regardless of what other dialect they speak.
I'm saying that "forward the information to myself" and "where he be" are not ambiguous. They're non-standard, but understandable without further clarification. The only problem with the first one is that it may be a result of a more serious misunderstanding. It's not a problem on its own.
Would you say that Middle English is "better" than Modern English because it makes a distinction between singular and plural second person?
No, because we have other standard ways of expressing the difference when we need to ("both of you", "just you", etc.). I'm not sure that applies in the reflexive pronoun example. There are other ways to do it, but depending on the context it can seem clumsy. Which, of course, is subjective in itself, but writers are generally told to learn how the standard language works before they mess around with alternatives, and I think that makes sense.
Language changes, and the change isn't good or bad, it's just change. It might have undesirable consequences...
Heh. Okay, fair enough. I'm arguing from a perspective of "value literacy, dammit", because we want to prevent these undesirable consequences.
And since we have a standard English, change that results in classes of the same society not being able to communicate is not likely to happen.
I'm really not so sure about that one. People can have difficulty comprehending unfamiliar dialects, even when they aren't being narrow-minded or actively refusing to understand. That's already happening, and if any of those people don't know standard English, communication is going to be difficult, especially when teaching standards vary as much as they do. There are still places in North America where classes and races keep to themselves.
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I agree with that.
The only problem with the first one is that it may be a result of a more serious misunderstanding. It's not a problem on its own.
The jury's out on what this violation of the "reflexives must have an antecedent in the same clause" rule means. It might be ungrammatical. It might be grammatical for some speakers. There are some definitely grammatical examples of this construction: "between ourselves" in the sense of "confidentially" is one. But I don't see the "serious misunderstanding." The confusion, if one exists, is purely grammatical.
My point is that it's nothing to be scared of, or angry about, or mocking of. If it moves into wider use, then it's probably grammatical. If it causes some change in English, well that's what languages do.
No, because we have other standard ways of expressing the difference when we need to ("both of you", "just you", etc.).
This is what I mean by "any concept can be expressed in any language." If a language loses a grammatical distinction, the speakers will find another way to express it if they need to.
I'm not sure that applies in the reflexive pronoun example. There are other ways to do it, but depending on the context it can seem clumsy. Which, of course, is subjective in itself, but writers are generally told to learn how the standard language works before they mess around with alternatives, and I think that makes sense.
I don't know much about writing. But I do know that the standard dialect (and prescriptive grammar) have little to do with clarity and precision. It's an accident of history that one dialect is standard and not another.
I'm really not so sure about that one.
Fair enough. I think that institutions like the BBC and mass media pretty much ensure that most English speakers will understand standard English. I guess it's an empirical question.
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http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002458.html
Re: Prescriptive Grammar