Interesting Linguistic Theory

orejas | 07 October, 2004 22:51

right

Aran, this is for you, so anyone who is bored/traumatised please direct abuse to her.

:D hee

see, most people think the standard dialect of a language is the 'better' one, more 'logical' etc. but. this is not really true...there is no linguistically better or worse dialect, only socially more or less privileged dialects.

with me so far?

so, in standard english, reflexive pronouns are as follows:

my-self
your-self
him-self
her-self
our-selves
their-selves

the root is the possessive pronoun, to which the suffix -self is added. but look again. him is not a possesive pronoun, its an indirect object pronoun.

in a northern dialect of english [the north of england] the third person pronouns are:

his-self
her-self
their-self

all of which are singular. here, the pattern is followed. but what of theirself? that appears to be a sociolinguistic change, because, with increasing consciousness of politically-correctness [eeep wot polysyllabia! and all grammatically doubtful im sure] this gender-neutral pronoun seems to have developed. and that is the pronoun i was using in that post, which is where it came from.

phew.