Byron T. Ahn | English Reflexive Nominals

While much of the research on reflexivity has investigated the distribution of reflexive nominals in larger structures, this set of investigations deals in the internal structure of reflexive nominals in English.

A foundational finding in this research is that nominals like ourselves are composed of at least three morphemes: a lexical root √SELF, a possessive pronoun (our), and a morpheme that triggers allomorphy and allosemy in reflexive contexts (a functional head, REFL⁰). This is argued for in Ahn and Kalin 2018 based on well-attested form alternations like ‘himself’ ~ ‘his damn self’, alongside various constraints on when this pronominal alternation is (un)available.

A syntactic analysis of English 'yourself'

Building on this, Ahn 2019 (et seqq) further explores the nominal structure of anaphors through the lens of φ-features. It has been widely assumed that the φ-features of bound pronouns must φ-match their antecedents. While generally true, there are several domains where φ-mismatches are regularly (and commonly) attested – and mismatch is constrained in informative ways. The patterns indicate that there are two derivational pathways for bound pronouns, such that 3.sg bound pronouns necessarily involve extra derivational machinery.

As a matter of sociosyntax in the same domain, Conrod, Schlutz & Ahn forthcoming (et seqq) explore the distribution of (competing) forms themself and themselves, in various cases where the antecedent is a 3.sg nominal. In addition to the expected effects of linguistic ideologies and social attitudes, this work finds larger effects of nominal type (i.e., functional structure) and dialect grouping.

A set of boxplots showing variation in ratings of themself and themselves in different syntactic contexts, across dialect groups

some work in this project

Conrod, Kirby, Ruth Schultz & Byron Ahn. In Press. How many selves for them? In NELS 52: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society,
abstract Paper Materials Bib

This work investigates the syntactic and semantic distribution of reflexive forms themself vs. themselves. We focus on whether the use of -self vs -selves is affected by specificity of the antecedent, distinguishing seven levels for a singular antecedent: quantified indefinites (some/any), quantified universals (each/every/no), generic kind definites, specific indefinites, specific definites, unknown specific person, named person. We administered an online acceptability judgment survey to 1,127 participants, recruited on Twitter and Prolific, who rated sentences on a 5-point Likert scale from “very natural” to “very unnatural,” in a randomized order, and then completed a short demographic survey. We find that antecedent type, -self/-selves form of the anaphor, and social variables including age, gender, and endorsement of prescriptive language ideology all affected how participants rated the sentences; themself was generally rated higher than themselves for most antecedents, contra previous findings. Our results seem to indicate that themself is preferred by many English speakers for singular antecedents, and also that the singular use of themself/themselves is a sociosyntactically active and salient variable across those speakers.
@incollection{Conrod-Schultz-Ahn-NELS52, author = {Conrod, Kirby and Schultz, Ruth and Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {{NELS} 52: Proceedings of the 52nd Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, title = {How many selves for them?}, year = {In Press} }
Conrod, Kirby & Byron Ahn. 2023, January. Who accepts themself? Sociosyntactic variation in English -self reflexives. Talk presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the LSA. Denver, CO.
abstract Bib

Though sg. they has been recently undergoing a change with respect to the types of antecedents it can take, it has been well attested throughout the history of English (Bjorkman 2017, Conrod 2019, Konnelly and Cowper 2020, Whitley 1978). Also well attested throughout the history of English, there are two reflexive forms for sg. they: themself and themselves (as noted in Whitley 1978). The present study explores what factors (social, ideological, and linguistic) influence acceptability of these forms. While preceding work has found themselves to be more acceptable in sg. they contexts (Ackerman et al. 2018), the present study uncovers more nuanced patterns. We find three patterns of acceptability, which we infer to represent different dialects. The parameters underlying these dialects have to do with how feature matching in binding can vary across English grammars.
@misc{conrodahn23, author = {Conrod, Kirby and Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at the 2023 annual meeting of the LSA. Denver, CO}, title = {Who accepts \emph{themself}? Sociosyntactic variation in English \emph{-self} reflexives}, year = {2023} }
Ahn, Byron & Kirby Conrod. 2022, March. Three ways to rate themself. Talk presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz.
abstract Slides Bib

Speakers’ acceptance of they referring to a singular antecedent (“singular they”) correlates with linguistic and social factors (e.g., antecedent type, or speaker age, gender, and ideology). The present study (i) investigates how themselves/themself are rated with different syntactically singular antecedent types and (ii) identifies three distinct dialect groups based solely on those ratings.

Importantly, the variation in ratings is not only impacted by factors like social variables and linguistic ideologies, but it is more greatly impacted by dialect groups that do not reduce to these factors. These results help document language variation/change, inform understanding of the variable grammar(s) of singular they, and furnish further evidence that the phi-features in English reflexive nominals do not need to fully match those of their anteceden.
@unpublished{Ahn-Conrod-2022-themself, author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby}, howpublished = {Talk presented at 35th Annual Conference on Human Sentence Processing (formerly the ‘CUNY Conference on Human Sentence Processing’). University of California, Santa Cruz}, title = {Three ways to rate themself}, year = {2022} }
Ahn, Byron, Kirby Conrod, Ameena Faruki, Steven Foley, Xander Guidry & Ruth Schultz. 2022, October. Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular they. Talk presented at NWAV 50. Stanford Universiy.
abstract Materials Slides Bib

Acceptance and usage of they pronouns in English is known to vary along both social and linguistic dimensions, but there are gaps in work from psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic, and formal theoretic angles. This “project launch” presentation describes the three studies we will carry out to further explore this domain. Two socio-pragmatic studies (an acceptability rating task and a sentence completion task) will explore the impact of the pragmatics of shared/concealed knowledge on pronoun choice, and one socio-syntactic study (a self-paced reading task) will explore comprehension of cataphoric usages of they to explore reader expectations. In addition, all studies will collect robust social data, on demographics and ideological beliefs.
@unpublished{ahnEtAl22-NWAV, author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby and Faruki, Ameena and Foley, Steven and Guidry, Xander and Schultz, Ruth}, howpublished = {Talk presented at NWAV 50. Stanford Universiy}, title = {Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular \emph{they}}, year = {2022} }

Ahn, Byron, Kirby Conrod, Ameena Faruki, Steven Foley, Xander Guidry & Ruth Schultz. 2022. Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular they. Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/5MVPZ

Website Bib

@unpublished{ahnEtAl22-OSF,
  author = {Ahn, Byron and Conrod, Kirby and Faruki, Ameena and Foley, Steven and Guidry, Xander and Schultz, Ruth},
  howpublished = {Respository hosted on the Open Science Framework},
  website = {https://osf.io/5mvpz/},
  doi = {10.17605/OSF.IO/5MVPZ},
  title = {Acceptability, production, and comprehension of definite singular \emph{they}},
  year = {2022}
}

Ahn, Byron. 2019, April. Anaphor Binding and Phi-(Mis)Matches in English. Talk presented at DISCO (Dependency in Syntactic Covariance): Phi-agreement, reference and case. Universiy of Leipzig.
abstract Handout Bib

English reflexive anaphors, such as ourselves, are derived syntactic objects, with internal structure paralleling possessives (and are not statically listed as morphosyntactically simplex [+reflexive] objects in the lexicon; Ahn and Kalin 2018, also Postal 1966). The pronominal component of the English anaphor is widely described (cf. discussion in Sundaresan 2018) as needing to φ-match the antecedent of binding. In other words, the generalization in (1) is seen as describing the fact that ourselves must be used in (2), and not themselves. (Features of the binder are diagnosed by, e.g., nominal and verbal morphology.)

(1) Generalization about φ-matching in English reflexive anaphors
Pronouns in a reflexive anaphor φ-match the local antecedent of binding

(2) We will not embarrass ourselves / *themselves

While (1) is generally true, φ-mismatch is possible between the binder and bound pronoun: two contexts where mismatch is possible are given in (3).

(3) a. The U.N. finds themselves / itself in a difficult position
b. Does Your Honor doubt yourself / herself?

At the same time, there are cases where mismatch is ruled out; two such cases are in (4), which are minimal pairs with those in (3).

(4) a. The U.N. countries find themselves / *itself in a difficult position
b. Do you doubt yourself / *herself?

This talk explores two questions. First, empirically, in what contexts can φ-mismatches (not) occur? Using data from informal judgments, corpus searches, and a new experiment, we will find that φ-mismatches are constrained in generalizable ways. Second, theoretically, what types of theory reflexive binding are plausible, in light of these generalizations? Some have argued that English reflexive anaphors are φ-deficient, requiring φ-valuation by the local antecedent of binding (perhaps mediated by a functional head, Krazter 2009); however, these findings suggest that English pronouns in reflexives exhibit a split in this area, between 3.sg and others. I suggest this is related to 3.sg pronouns being the only ones in English that mark gender.
@unpublished{Ahn-DISCO, author = {Ahn, Byron}, howpublished = {Talk presented at DISCO (Dependency in Syntactic Covariance): Phi-agreement, reference and case. Universiy of Leipzig}, title = {Anaphor Binding and Phi-(Mis)Matches in {E}nglish}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron. 2019. Features, Identity, and ‘Yourself.’ In Maggie Baird & Jonathan Pesetsky (eds.), NELS 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, Vol. 1, 15–24.
abstract Paper Handout Bib

It has been widely assumed that the φ-features of bound pronouns must φ-match their antecedents. (We behave ourselves/*themselves.) While generally true, φ-mismatches are regularly (and commonly) attested, e.g.,:

Each of us behaves ourselves/themselves. (3sg antecedent; 1pl/3pl anaphor)

I wouldn’t blame yourself.1em (1sg antecedent; 2sg anaphor)

However, mismatch is constrained in informative ways. The patterns indicate that there are two derivational pathways for bound pronouns, such that 3.sg bound pronouns necessarily involve extra derivational machinery.
@incollection{Ahn-NELS49, author = {Ahn, Byron}, booktitle = {{NELS} 49: Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, editor = {Baird, Maggie and Pesetsky, Jonathan}, pages = {15--24}, title = {Features, Identity, and `Yourself'}, volume = {1}, year = {2019} }
Ahn, Byron & Laura Kalin. 2018. What’s in a (English) Reflexive? In NELS 48: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society, Vol. 1, 1–13.
abstract Paper Handout Bib

In this paper, we investigate the internal structure of English reflexive anaphors. While it is clear that English Reflexive anaphors consist of a pronoun and a form of “self”, any questions of how their internal structure is derived have been largely ignored. We take up two puzzles the explore this more deeply.

First, the case puzzle: the pronominal components are genitive in 1st/2nd person (myself, yourselves) but accusative in 3rd person (himself, themselves).

Second, the modifier puzzle: modifiers are possible between the pronoun and “self”, but only some of them still permit the expression to occur in reflexive positions (Behave your annoying/*tired self!, She her brilliant/*caffeinated selfsolved a Millennium Problem.).

We show that the solutions to these puzzles are inter-related, and collude to lead us towards a precise syntactic analysis. In particular, our investigations into these puzzles have led us to make several conclusions: (i) they are syntactically complex, (ii) their reflexivity emerges through the derivation, and (iii) at least some morphological processes must ordered after syntax. Moreover, this work may have serious implications for many other areas, such as the analysis of exempt reflexives, what varies across dialects, and what varies across languages.
@incollection{Ahn-Kalin-NELS48, author = {Ahn, Byron and Kalin, Laura}, booktitle = {{NELS} 48: Proceedings of the 48th Annual Meeting of the {N}orth {E}ast {L}inguistics {S}ociety}, pages = {1--13}, title = {What's in a ({E}nglish) Reflexive?}, volume = {1}, year = {2018} }

	Each of us behaves ourselves/themselves.	(3sg antecedent; 1pl/3pl anaphor)
	I wouldn’t blame yourself.1em	(1sg antecedent; 2sg anaphor)