Reflexive pronoun

“ Further, there is a reflexive pronoun, g a себя (with no n form) , used when an object is the same person as the subject: я вижу себя "I see myself"; он дал себе слово "he gave himself his word"; вы говорите о себе "you are talking about yourself (or yourselves) ." ”

“ The endings sen, seln, sens are chiefly confined to the n.Midl. dialects. The endings self, selves are hardly ever used in Sc. Irel. n.Cy. and n.Midlands. Frequently the objective case of the simple personal pronoun is used with a reflexive meaning, especially in Sc. n.Cy. and n.Midl., as: get thee dressed while I wash me. In Sc. theirsel is used when the idea is collective, theirsels when it is segregate. ”

“ REFLEXIVE AND IMPERSONAL VERBS.
234. Reflexive verbs are those that always have as their object a pronoun denoting the same person as the subject; Ex. at skamme sig to feel ashamed; jeg skammer mig I feel ashamed, han skammer sig, vi skamme (r) os, I skamme (r) eder, de skamme (r) sig.
Transitive verbs may be used reflexively; Ex. at slaa sig to hurt one’s self (at slaa to beat) ; at vise sig to appear (at vise to show) .
Note. At hænde, at hænde sig, at hændes all indicate: to happen ”

“ Did your father bring the boat to Harry? No, he brought it to —— of us.
7. —— of them did his (their) duty.
Change of Pronoun. [60] —In referring to the same person or thing a writer should not change from one pronoun to another.
The possessive of "one" is "one's" (not "his") , except in such expressions as "every one," "no one," "many a one." The reflexive is "one's self."
It is a common but serious fault to begin to write in the third person, and then to change to the first or second. ”

“ They are declined throughout like substantives, with the exception of the personal suffixes; as, önnek, önt, önre, öntől, &c. They may also be determined by postpositions, like any substantive—ön után, ön előtt, &c.—and govern the verb or their object in the third person; as, önnek kalap-ja, your hat (here kalap-ja is in the third person) .
II. Reflexive Pronouns.
Reflexive pronouns are so called because they turn back or "reflect" their meaning to the subject of the sentence. They are:
Note.—Wen the relation is not reflective, but reciprocal, they are called reciprocals ”

“ A pronoun, whether personal, demonstrative, or relative, is a wonderful linguistic invention, enabling the speaker to carry on long trains of unbroken thought. Its invention was no more connected with the sense of self, than was the invention of any labor-saving device. ”

“ The first personal pronoun is ever on his lips and in his thought. Only as culture arises and he is trained to see how disagreeable in others is excessive emphasis on the first person, does he learn to moderate his own excessive egoistic tendency. ”

“ In such a phrase there is always a substantive, and if this is changed to a personal pronoun we find that it is in the objective case; for example, “A writer is so like a [Pg 155] lover.”—Holmes. Substituting a pronoun for lover we find that usage calls for the objective form him. Does this prove that like is a preposition and him its object? ”

“ Him is the objective after the imperative let, and is correct. Whom should be who, as pronoun attribute of the verb may be. “Who he may be, I cannot tell,” is correct. “Who he may be, let him be,” is also correct. By transposing, and by omitting be, we have “Let him be who he may.”
“Let the sea roar, and the fullness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.” When, as in this case, the verb is widely separated from its object, we need to give particular care to the case of the pronoun which constitutes the object. They should be them. ”

“ We shall betray no confidence; and should we be compelled to speak somewhat more in the first person, and of ourselves, than may seem quite accordant with good taste, our readers will, we trust, suffer us to remind them that we do not commit the fault very often, or very offensively, and that the present employment of the personal pronoun, just a little modified by the editorial we, seems inevitably incident to the special line of statement on which we propose to enter. ”

“ Humbler people yielded through fear of offence; and the practice extended, in time, to all ranks of society: so that at present the customary mode of familiar as well as complimentary address, is altogether plural; both the verb and the pronoun being used in that form. [237] This practice, which confounds one of the most important distinctions of the language, affords a striking instance of the power of fashion. It has made propriety itself seem improper. But shall it be allowed, in the present state of things, to confound our conjugations and overturn our grammar? ”

“ The demonstrative pronoun is, ea, id, as we learned in § 115, is regularly used as the personal pronoun of the third person (he, she, it, they, etc.) . 280. The personal pronouns of the first person are ego, I ”

“ Ours is, I believe, the only language that has shown so much sense of the worth of the individual (to himself) as to erect the first personal pronoun into a kind of votive column to the dignity of human nature. ”

“ And, in the opinion of any judicious teacher, an erroneous classification of words so common and so important as these, may well go far to condemn any system of grammar in which it is found. A pronoun agrees in person, number, and gender, with the noun for which it is a substitute ”

“ The pronouns their and they should be singular.
“Everybody has something to say which they think is worthy of being heard.” Everybody refers to persons singly, and not collectively. They think should be he thinks, he being the proper pronoun to employ when the gender is not indicated. ”

“ In the English language, the imperative mood of a verb is never conjugated with a pronoun in the nominative case, therefore, "Let you and I try to move it," "Let him and I go up and speak to them," are manifest improprieties. A very simple test may be formed by taking away the first noun or pronoun from the sentence altogether, and bringing the verb or preposition right against that pronoun which you use to designate yourself: thus, "They were coming to see I," "The claret will be packed in two hampers for I," "Let I try to move it," &c. ”

“ The explanatory parenthesis “she thought” comes between the pronominal subject and its verb might be interested. Omit the explanatory clause and the case of the pronoun becomes clear. “She sang for the benefit of those who might be interested.”
Agreement with Antecedent
A pronoun must agree with its antecedent in gender, person, and number. The gender and person usually take care of themselves, but the number of pronouns is a serious obstacle to correct speech.
“One tells the quality of their minds when they try to talk well”—George Eliot, in Middlemarch. ”

“ Again disappointed, and again perceiving that his language has not all the precision that is requisite, the orator retires to his study, and there, after much deep thinking, conceives that the insertion of a pronoun, whose office shall be to signify that he not only wants the apple to be given but given to himself, will remedy all defects, he uses it the next opportunity, and succeeds to a wonder, obtains the apple, and by his success such credit to his invention, that pronouns continue to be in great repute ever after. ”

“ In the sentence, the personal pronoun, thy, is once, and the personal pronoun, thou, is five times, applied to the Adam whom God addressed. “In the sweat of thy face, shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” When we address our fellowmen by the different personal pronouns of our language, what do we address? The conscious, intelligent, responsible man, that which sees, feels, hears, thinks, acts, and is morally accountable. ”

“ Pronouns Referring to Ideas.—Probably the most prolific cause of bad grammar and of obscurity of meaning in news writing may be found in the use of unclear pronouns. One or more instances may be found in almost every paper a reader examines. A reporter should assure himself that every pronoun he uses refers to a particular word in the sentence and that it agrees with that word in gender and number. The use of a pronoun to refer to a general idea not expressed in a particular word is one of the commonest causes of ambiguity and obscurity in newspaper work. ”

“ When a noun of multitude or collective noun is the antecedent, the pronoun, like the verb, must be plural or singular according to the sense intended to be conveyed.
Ambiguity
Never leave the antecedent of your pronoun in doubt.
“John tried to see his father in the crowd, but could not, because he was so short.” If the father was short, repeat the noun and omit the pronoun, as “John tried to see his father in the crowd but could not because his father was so short.” If John was short, recast the sentence: “John, being short of stature, tried in vain to see his father in the crowd.” ”

“ Me will go with you to the woods,” the faultiness of which is evident. The answer should be “I.”
After “Than” and “As”
The objective pronoun is often incorrectly used for the nominative after than or as.
“He can swim better than me.” The complete sentence would be, “He can swim better than I can swim.” The omission of the verb can swim affords no reason for changing I to me.
“He is no better than me.” Say, “He is no better than I,” meaning, I am.
“They are common people, such as you and me.” Such people “as you and I are.” The pronoun should be I, not me. ”

“ Thus, if we are speaking of books, and say [,] 'Mine are here,' mine means my books, [Fist] and it must be deemed a personal pronoun possessive in the third person plural, and nominative to the verb are."--Smart's Accidence, p. xxii. If to say, these "possessive cases must be called a class of pronouns, used substantively, and deemed nominatives or objectives," is not absurd, then nothing can be. Nor is any thing in grammar more certain, than that the pronoun "mine" can only be used by the speaker or writer, to denote himself or herself as the owner of something. ”

“ The third phrase of every new generation of men and women, limits eyes by telling whose eyes are meant. The fourth phrase, of men and women, limits the application of the noun generation to human beings only, and brings in the nouns men and women to serve as antecedents of the pronoun their later in the sentence. ”

“ For example he says in a Letter to the Governors, Instructors, and Trustees of the Universities and other Seminaries of Learning in the United States, "According to the grammars, the pronoun you, being originally plural, must always be followed by a plural verb, though referring to a single person. ”

“ And the pronoun, the adjective, the adverb and the preposition, however they may be disjunctively employed in certain cases, are chiefly useful as furnishing materials to the speaker, to be worked up into the complicated texture of the verb and the substantive. Nothing, in fact, can be more unlike, than the language, viewed in its original, elementary state,—in a vocabulary, for instance, of its primitive words, so far as such a vocabulary can now be formed, and the same language as heard under its oral, amalgamated form. ”

“ Point out the pronouns in the following sentences, that are used to express emphasis, and those that are used as reflexives, that is, as objects denoting the same person or thing as the subject:—
Pronouns that are used to express emphasis, and those that are used as reflexives, are called compound personal pronouns.
Compound personal pronouns are formed by adding self to the simple pronouns. ”

“ Sentences like "She invited Mrs. R. and I to go driving" are common, even among people generally well-informed. Such mistakes will be avoided if the speaker stops to think what the form would be if the pronoun were not coupled with a noun. ”

“ There is much danger that in some way the antecedent of a pronoun will be left uncertain. If the antecedent is shifted, if the pronoun stands without any antecedent, or with only a vague antecedent, or if the word to which it refers grammatically is not the word to which it refers in sense, ambiguity surely results. ”

“ In the pronoun we find often a much more rigid adherence to the series of three persons than the one that we apply, in so far as the distinction is carried through in the pronominal plural and in the demonstrative. ”

“ The indefinite adjective pronoun one when put in place of a personal substantive is liable to raise confusion. When a sentence or expression is begun with the impersonal one the word must be used throughout in all references to the subject. Thus, "One must mind one's own business if one wishes to succeed" may seem prolix and awkward, nevertheless it is the proper form. ”

“ By compounding the pronoun with the verb and preserving the full adverb, as in “I’m not,” “You’re not,” “They’re not,” we also reduce the three vocal impulses to two, thus securing as short a contraction in sound and one that is as fully adapted to colloquial speech, and that is, at the same time, in much better taste.
The old form for ain’t was an’t, but this has now become obsolete. It will be a blessing to the English-speaking people when the descendant shall sleep with his father.
Are not is sometimes contracted into aren’t, but this form has not found much favor. ”