The Semantic Unity of Reflexive, Emphatic, and Other -self Pronouns

In contrast to studies that have focused on the syntactic properties of English -self pronouns (myself, yourself, etc.), this paper investigates the semantic and pragmatic contributions these forms make in different structural contexts, including not only appositive uses, but also reflexives and a wide variety of so-called exceptional uses, such as logophoric expressions and picture noun phrases. An extensive examination of data from a collection of spoken and written texts reveals that -self pronouns in different structural environments nevertheless exhibit the same semantic and pragmatic characteristics. The structurally diverse assemblage of reflexives, emphatics, and a list of other exceptions are shown to have semantic unity, since the same message effects are seen in all of these environments, including argument and appositive, reflexive and emphatic, as well as what are traditionally described as discourse-based uses.