Plural reflexive sin

[Verbivore]

Too often we read / hear the likes of "... please contact Mr Thing or myself".

Now we have the plural version (which is new to me).

From ABC News Online - www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/08/06/2326091.htm - a quotation from a union official:

All the tugs are in Port Pirie at the moment so the agent and ourselves are trying to chase down a charter vessel.

[Alan Palmer]

I can't cite any examples offhand, but I'm pretty sure I've seen that use in the past.

[Dave M]

I'm not sure that those examples are "wrong". Where the intention is simply to include the speaker, then it's certainly sweeter to have just:
please contact Mr Thing or me, and
the agent and we are trying ...

However, sometimes there's a greater intention involved: that of making clear that the speaker (who may normally be thought to leave the action to others) is personally involved. This is the structure involved when we say "I'll do it myself", or "Don't ask me: they'll reply themselves", and in the present examples the use is saying something like "Please contact Mr Thingy - or don't be afraid to contact me, because I am myself happy to be contacted".

You can't "reply yourself" as a transitive verb (in the way you'd "wash yourself"), but you can "reply yourself" when you stress that it is you personally who will reply.

[Dave]

Perhaps it's the remoteness of the pronoun, caused by an interposing and or or in a compound subject (or object), that cause the 'stumble.'

• contact Mr Thing or myself
  
• the agent and ourselves are trying
  

There's usually less confusion when the construction isn't compound: We're less likely to say "Contact myself" or "ourselves are trying..."

It's similar to the compound-object use of the subjective/nominative case in "for you and I."

[goofy]

I've said this before, but it's at least 400 years old.

[Verbivore]

Aug 6, 2008 13:14:04 GMT @goofy said:

I've said this before, but it's at least 400 years old.

But those earlier-quoted examples aren't ugly or clumsy as "[...] the agent and ourselves are trying [...] ". Regardless one's stance on usage, grammar, "correctness", that is simply inexcusably ugly.

Would you accept "ourselves are trying"? If not, then how can you defend "the agent and ourselves are trying" as okay usage?

Some linguistic sins have little to do with description or prescription - rather aesthetics, and on that score "the agent and ourselves are trying" is a sin of the mortal kind (or at least the cardinal variety - #7: sloth).

[Dave M]

> Would you accept "ourselves are trying"? <

Indeed not, Vv. If they wanted to make the "personally" point, while referring only to their own action, they'd rephrase it to something like: We are, ourselves, trying to chase down a charter vessel - leaving a clean use of "we" as subject and interjecting the "ourselves" as a point of emphasis.

So perhaps the composite form would sound better as the agent and we ourselves are trying to chase down a charter vessel.

(And if they wanted to make it sweeter still, they could put "track down" rather than "chase down" )

[goofy]

Aug 6, 2008 13:33:48 GMT Verbivore said:

Aug 6, 2008 13:14:04 GMT @goofy said:

I've said this before, but it's at least 400 years old.

But those earlier-quoted examples aren't ugly or clumsy as "[...] the agent and ourselves are trying [...] ". Regardless one's stance on usage, grammar, "correctness", that is simply inexcusably ugly.

Different writers will have different opinions on whether it is ugly. The examples I gave are slightly different than your example. Most of my examples have the reflexive pronoun conjoined and as the object, while in your example it is the subject. But there are many subject examples:

In fact, Colonel Jimmy Gault, his British Aide, and myself got in quite a sweat - George S. Patton Jr., 1947

The Dewas party and myself got out at a desolate station - EM Forster, 1953

...Chester Kallman and myself always find it helpful - WH Auden, 1967

...Williams, and Desmoulins, and myself are very sickly - Samuel Johnson, 1782

There are no examples with "ourselves", but otherwise these are identical grammatically with your example.

Would you accept "ourselves are trying"? If not, then how can you defend "the agent and ourselves are trying" as okay usage?

Conjoined pronouns behave differently than single pronouns, and expecting them to behave the same is imo a mistake. However, I'm not saying any of these are "okay usage". I'm saying they're grammatical English. Whether they're ugly or sinful or acceptable is another matter.

[Dave M]

> I'm saying they're grammatical English. Whether they're ugly or sinful or acceptable is another matter. <

Whereas "different than" is neither?

[Tone]

Nice one, Dave M.

Tone