Linguistic theory and the historical creation of English reflexives
This chapter documents the historical creation of English reflexive pronouns in the 1500s from Old English which lacked them. The chapter evokes two general principles of change, decay and inertia; one specifically linguistic principle of change, generalization; and two universal bounding conditions, full intrepretation and anti‐synonymy.
Keywords: reflexives, inertia, decay, old english, exaptation
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .