Semantic Analysis of Pronouns

The reflexive pronoun typically has a structure including the combining suffix "self:" myself, yourself, himself, herself, itself, oneself, ourselves, yourselves, themselves. Citing their archaic context, Fowler refers as well to certain reflexive constructions in which the appended suffix of "self" is not included: "He sat him down, I bethought me" (Fowler 615). Fowler's definition of reflexive verbs follows from this, that such verbs "are those of which the object and the subject are the same person or thing." They must be transitive in nature for the reason that their subject must have an object that "reflects" itself. Baldi notes that certain verbs, such as absent, bestir, and perjure, not only take but require the reflexive form in order to be properly used as transitives (Baldi).

In order to understand the semantic structure of a statement containing a reflexive, it is useful to identify the principal elements of such a statement. For purposes of the analysis, this research follows Wilkins's designation of the reflexive pronoun as the reflexive anaphor, although she adds that strictly speaki

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elf," in this view, does not meet the criteria of role distribution that Wilkins requires because the reflexive pronoun and verb do not possess the same kind of rolebased linkage that "I see myself in the mirror" does. Similarly, other reflexive constructions, because of their ambiguity of meaning, offer a challenge to the notion that role and theme account for all cases. Consider the following statements as instances of this ambiguity: (1) "Mary explained herselfa [or] herselfb." (2) "Mary revealed herselfc [or] herselfd." Statement (1) has two potential meanings, one of which may be taken as "purely" reflexive and the other of which may be considered ambiguous. In the first instance, "Mary explained herselfa," where herself refers uniquely to her personality or psychology, the sentence has a meaning predicated of reflexivity within the frame of the Wilkins's model. "Mary" assigns the role of explanation, and "herself" is that which assumes the role of the thing which Mary explains or which is explained. The case of the second instance of Statement (1), "Mary explained herselfb," where herself refers to her beliefs, her opinions, her appearance, her actions, and/or her personality or psychology, is more
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Approximate Word count = 2271
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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