Abstract
Of the language changes spanning across the Early Modern English period (EModE), a substantial number occurred in the word class of verbs. Next to the continued grammaticalization of modal verbs, the continued levelling of endings and the increased usage of auxiliaries, we can also observe the gradual decline of the category of reflexive verbs.
This development only affected a portion of verbs, among the most frequent of which are fear, remember, doubt, lay. At the beginning of the EModE period, these verbs were frequently used reflexively, but with a non-reflexive meaning, such as: e.g.
I feare me thys wyll be iudged hygh treason. (EEBO, A22095) The EModE period is also one in which the self-type reflexive pronouns myself, yourself, himself etc. gradually came to replace the object pronouns me, you, him etc. Initially, their function was emphatic and limited to oblique positions (Gelderen, 2000:63).
Moreover, corpus data indicate that these "new" reflexive pronouns were only used with a handful of verbs. This paper examines data retrieved from the EEBO corpus (Early English Books Online) and its aim is twofold.
Firstly, we attempt to outline the uniting features of those verbs which occurred with a reflexive pronoun in a non-reflexive context at the beginning of the EModE period. There is reason to believe that these verbs share semantic features which made this development possible, e.g. the inherent reflexivity of the verb lay which no longer requires the reflexive pronoun, as in "I lay me down".
In the second part of this paper we examine the contexts of the newly emerging reflexive pronouns myself, yourself, himself etc. in contrast to the use of the older, in the EModE period still more frequent forms me, you, him etc.