Let's take a moment to review two groups
of pronouns: reflexive pronouns and
reciprocal pronouns. As you can see, the
reciprocal pronouns--this is a very
small category: there's just two in this
category, and they're actually quite
similar. And in the reflexive pronoun
category we have always the same ending.
So in the singular "itself" all the way
through. And then in the plural it's
"selves," not much different there.
So as long as you can recognize that,
you can at least categorize them. And
we'll look at some examples very briefly
also just to see how we can use them.
First of all then, reflexive pronouns are
used in one of two ways.
In the first example here, we have
reflexive pronouns being used to refer
back to the subject. And what happens
here is that the pronoun is the object
of the verb, so "blamed" is the verb. Blamed
who? Well, we blamed ourselves. And then
"ourselves" is exactly the same as "we." In
other words, the object and the subject
are the same. So we can write "subject
= object." We can change the word
order little bit, but that's the
essential idea here. So "know yourself." Who
is going to know?
Well, it's you. "You" is the implied subject.
You could even say "you know yourself." And
we see the same pattern: "yourself" equals
"you." Sometimes reflexive pronouns are
also called intensive or emphatic
pronouns, and they're exactly the same
pronouns but the function has
changed a little bit. So in this case,
"herself" is not the object of the verb. So
"ate" is the verb, and she's not eating
"herself." Instead, there's a little bit
more emphasis on the subject. So we could
have left "herself" out: we could have said
"Colleen ate all the candies" but we
really want to put the blame on Colleen,
so we say "Colleen herself." And so that
adds a little bit of emphasis,
intensifies things just a little bit. So
those are the two ways in which we can
use reflexive pronouns. And don't be too
confused by the terminology. This second
way of describing what reflexive
pronouns do--this is not some
new pronoun; it's just different
words for a different usage. One final
point about reflexive pronouns: watch out
for this expression where you add "myself"
to a noun or a pronoun. So if you say, "she
and myself" or "Sam and myself,"
normally that's incorrect. And you could
do this little test to see if you need
"myself" in this instance. If you were to
say "the bridal cake was made by myself"--
that was sound awkward. If you said "it was
made by me," then it would sound ok. So
just see what you need: whether it's
"myself," "me," or "I," and most of the time you
just need one of these two and rarely
would you need "myself" in this kind of
construction where "myself" is with
another pronoun or noun.
So just watch out for that. This comes
across as slang in some ways. And then we
have reciprocal pronouns, our second
category. As mentioned there are just two
of these, and they mean pretty much the
same thing.
So what reciprocal pronouns do is they
refer back to something, typically
earlier in a sentence.
So in this case we have "those dishes," and
in the second instance we have "they,"
and then we have "one another" refers back
to "they," and "each other" refers back to
"dishes."
Now these pronouns, the set of
pronouns, refers to actions that happen
in kind; they are returned in kind. And we
can also think of this word "reciprocal"
as something that's reciprocated.
The verb means that
something is returned, an action has a
corresponding action to it, something
like that. And so we can see how, in the
first instance, "those dishes" (multiple
dishes here) ... they complement each other.
"Each other" refers to the dishes working
together or having an effect on each
other. And in the second instance, "one
another" refers back to "they." And again
there's that kind of reciprocal action.
So "love" is a nice instance of this
because love should be reciprocal. If
it's just one way, then I suppose it's
not really love, or maybe it's just
obsession.
I'm not sure. So those are two sets of
pronouns, fairly small categories, but
it's very useful to know about them so
you can find them in a sentence.