Latin Grammar Mini-Series | Lesson 13 - Reflexive and Intensive Pronouns

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There are four important rules to remember in this chapter: 

(1) reflexives reflect the subject; 

(2) reflexive forms must match the subject in person and number; 

(3) English -self or -selves forms can refer to action which either affects oneself, in which case they’re reflexive, or is done in person in which case they’re intensive; 

(4) English intensives tend to follow directly what they refer to; English reflexives, as a rule, never do. 

Reflexive Pronouns. 

Reflexive pronouns are pronouns that refer back to the subject… Let's just say English overmarks these forms. For instance, we say “I praise myself.” Think about it for a second. You don’t have to say “-self.” You can just say “I praise me,” and it means the same thing. So we overmark the reflexive by saying “myself,” when we could just say “me.” In the same way we say “You praise yourself,” you could simply say “You praise you,” and it would mean the same thing…………….. Only in the third person is the “-self” form actually required! When you think about it, in any sentence and context it is clear who “I” or “you” is, but it is not always clear who “he” is. That’s because there can be two different “he’s” being referred to, but you and I always know who we are when we’re speaking with each other. 

So unlike “me” and “myself” or “you” and “yourself,” “him” and “himself” have to be differentiated, for instance, “He praises him,” meaning “The poet praises the king.” Here the “him” is non-reflexive because it is not the poet praising himself. To make the sentence reflexive, you change “him” to “himself” and you change the thought of the sentence entirely. “He praises himself” means the poet is praising the poet, not the king. The same is true of the third person plural, for example, “They praise them,” meaning “The poets are praising the kings.” There “them” is non-reflexive, but “They praise themselves” (“The poets are praising the poets”), there “themselves” is reflexive. Where English overmarks reflexives, Latin does not. There’s my long-winded explanation to further my cause in eradicating 

Therefore, if reflexive pronouns reflect the subject, they can be in any of the following cases:  

the genitive: “He longed for praise of himself.”  

the dative: “We gave a gift to ourselves.”  

the accusative: "You love yourself too much.”  

and the ablative: “They can see good in themselves.” 

The intensive pronoun is more complicated, and unnecessarily so, than Latin. (Ha!) English intensive pronouns use the same form as their reflexive counterparts ─ “himself,” “herself,” “itself” and so on ─ which means in English you can’t look at a pronoun that’s intensive or reflexive and tell which one it is, based only on the appearance of its form. 

Consider the following: “He himself went to the forum.” What does “himself” mean here? Think about it. It means he went there in person. He didn’t send one of his slaves or one of his friends. He went there and did his business on his own. As opposed to “He went to the forum and bought food for himself.” Here “himself” is reflexive because it refers back to “he,” the subject. In other words, he did it in his own behalf. 

Now consider this sentence: “You yourself praised yourself.” 

The first “yourself” is intensive. “You yourself” means you did it in person. 

The second “yourself” is reflexive. 

“Praised yourself” means the action of praising was brought back on “you,” the subject. Note: that in English the intensive and reflexive pronoun forms are the same. They’re both “yourself.”