
A History of English Reflexive Pronouns
Person, Self, and Interpretability
Elly Gelderen(Author)
John Benjamins Publishing Co
Published on 20. October 2000
Book
Hardback
277 pages
978-90-272-2760-7 (ISBN)
Description
This book brings together a number of seemingly distinct phenomena in the history of English: the introduction of special reflexive pronouns (e.g. myself), the loss of verbal agreement and pro-drop, and the disappearance of morphological Case. It provides vast numbers of examples from Old and Middle English texts showing a person split between first, second, and third person pronouns. Extending an analysis by Reinhart & Reuland, the author argues that the 'strength' of certain pronominal features (Case, person, number) differs cross-linguistically and that parametric variation accounts for the changes in English. The framework used is Minimalist, and Interpretable and Uninterpretable features are seen as the key to explaining the change from a synthetic to an analytic language.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
510 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-272-2760-7 (9789027227607)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
10/2000
1st Edition
John Benjamins Publishing Company
€136.99
Available for download
Person
Content
1. Preface; 2. List of tables; 3. Notes for the user and list of abbreviations; 4. Introduction; 5. 1. Old English reflexives; 6. 2. Reflexives in Middle and later English; 7. 3. Pro-drop and feature strength; 8. 4. The loss of verbal agreement and verb-movement; 9. 5. The loss of inherent case; 10. 6. Ergativity and the person split; 11. 7. Conclusion; 12. Appendix; 13. References; 14. Name Index; 15. Subject Index