Reflexive deletion allowed?

Question

Hi there!I am writing term paper on resultative constructions in English and German and stumbled across the problem of reflexive insertion in certain constructions of both languages, e.g.intransitive / agentivea.	The joggers ran themselves sick.b.	The kids laughed themselves into a frenzy.c.	The teacher talked himself blue in the face.d.	The tourists walked themselves ragged.transitive / agentivee.	He drank himself into the grave.f.	The tenors sang themselves hoarse.As far as I know all these sentences are judged grammatical by native speakers (if not please let me know!). How would, in your own opinion, grammaticality change if the reflexives (himself, themselves) are left out in the constructions above?It would be great if you could give your grammaticality judgements in the following way:* 	= ungrammatical?? 	= very strange but not yet ungrammatical? 	= a little strange but not yet ungrammaticalok 	= perfect sentencee.g. a=?, b=*, c=ok etc.(you are of course also invited to comment in detail)BTW, I'm also looking for constructions with verbs which are both intransitive (i.e. it does not take a direct object) and non-agentive (i.e. the verb's subject does not consciously and willingly do something). Do you have any ideas?Thanks, I really appreciate your support!Friedel

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Friedel Martin Frowein wrote on 05 Mar 2005:
[nq:1]Hi there! I am writing term paper on resultative constructions in English and German and stumbled across the problem of ... As far as I know all these sentences are judged grammatical by native speakers (if not please let me know!).[/nq]
Yes, they're perfectly grammatical and idiomatic.
[nq:1]How would, in your own opinion, grammaticality change if the reflexives (himself, themselves) are left out in the constructions above?[/nq]
Not only would the grammar change (not necessarily to ungrammaticality), but so would the meanings. For example, "The tenors sang hoarse" would mean that they were hoarse before they began to sing, not after. "He drank into the grave" is meaningless nonsense, and "The kids laughed into a frenzy" is perfectly grammatical, but because a "frenzy" is a state of being and not tangible and has no 3rd dimension into which one can laugh, it is a nonsensical sentence.
[nq:1]It would be great if you could give your grammaticality judgements in the following way: * = ungrammatical ?? = ... subject does not consciously and willingly do something). Do you have any ideas? Thanks, I really appreciate your support! Friedel[/nq]
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.
"I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirise George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporise them." Tom Lehrer.

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Thanks, that helped a lot!
I'm now trying to find constructions similar to the one in (a) below where the reflexive is (at least syntactically) optional. The results are (b) in (c) although I am not too sure whether or not these sentences are grammatical without the reflexives.
a. The tenors sang (themselves) hoarse.
b. The skydiver jumped (himself) injured.
c. The student read (himself) tired.
Would you please also comment on these two? As a non-native speaker I always have the problem that the more often I hear such sentences, the more I like them (even though they might be totally wrong 8))

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[nq:1]Thanks, that helped a lot! I'm now trying to find constructions similar to the one in (a) below where the ... the more often I hear such sentences, the more I like them (even though they might be totally wrong 8))[/nq]
Neither b. nor c. make sense in either case (i.e. with the reflexive or without).
Regards, Einde O'Callaghan

Usenet · Answer

Friedel Martin Frowein wrote on 07 Mar 2005:
[nq:1]Thanks, that helped a lot! I'm now trying to find constructions similar to the one in (a) below where the reflexive is (at least syntactically) optional.[/nq]
I don't think this is an example of a syntactic option. That would be something like this:
"He said (that) he was hungry."
Including the "that" is syntactically optionaland semantically neutral (ie it doesn't change the meaning).
[nq:1]The results are (b) in (c) although I am not too sure whether or not these sentences are grammatical without the reflexives. a. The tenors sang (themselves) hoarse.[/nq]
As I said in my previous reply, the sentences represented here have two different meanings. With the reflexive it means that the singers started out in good voice but ended up hoarse because of their singing. Without the reflexive it means that the singers were hoarse when they began singing, perhaps because they had been shouting at a sporting event or because they all had throat infections. That doesn't allow a choice as the "that" example above does.
[nq:1]b. The skydiver jumped (himself) injured. c. The student read (himself) tired.[/nq]
As Einde pointed out in his reply, neither of these is a sensible sentence with the reflexive. I think, however, one could make a case for calling both elliptical because an important (for the written language and for formal speech) adverbial has been dropped: "while".

I don't think a native speaker of English would have any trouble understanding what these sentences meant if someone actually used them in speech or writing, but they are not idiomatic to my eye or my ear. They look and sound more like the kind of thing some linguists (including native anglophones(,) who ought to know better) will claim is "possible in English".
These constructions are "possible in English" only becase they represent a certain structure that is both grammatical and idiomatic when the words that fill the slots are semantically appropriate. They are formulaic and read as if a computer program had created them. I used to have hundreds of examples of such silliness from the archives of Japanese publishers of EFL books.
While authentic speech is filled with exceptional sentences in exceptional circumstances, the purpose of using example sentences like these ought to be to illustrate standard idiomatic expression, not grammatically possible but non-idiomatic or semantically absurd expression.
[nq:1]Would you please also comment on these two? As a non-native speaker I always have the problem that the more often I hear such sentences, the more I like them (even though they might be totally wrong 8))[/nq]
Franke: EFL teacher & medical editor
For email, replace numbers with English alphabet.
'Henry Kissinger once justified U.S. support for the Pinochet coup in Chile by saying "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."' Time Magazine article

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Thank you very much for you replies. That helped a lot ;-)

Reflexive deletion allowed?

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