Prescriptive Grammar

[bcholmes]

Do you think English could just ditch the reflexive pronouns?

Comments

Myself...

[kalikanzara.livejournal.com]

...I'll take no position on the question.

[epi-lj.livejournal.com]

(Are we personifying English for the purposes of this question?)

To what end?

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Would you settle for improper use thereof meriting beatings?

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

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.

[rosefox]

But whom would ever agree to it?

[marahsk.livejournal.com]

No. Giving in to the heathens and philistines is just letting them win.

[gooofy.livejournal.com]

That's up to the speakers of English. Grammar books don't make the rules, populations do.

Re: Prescriptive Grammar

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

no. they provide a handy weeder for detecting people who don't care sufficiently for the language they're speaking. *tongue in cheek*.