An intensive pronoun (or self-intensifier) adds emphasis to a statement; for example, "I did it ''myself''." While English intensive pronouns (e.g., ''myself'', ''yourself'', ''himself, herself'', ''ourselves'', ''yourselves'', ''themselves'') use the same form as reflexive pronouns, an intensive pronoun is different from a reflexive pronoun because it functions as an adverbial or adnominal modifier, not as an

argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...

of a verb. Both intensive and reflexive pronouns make reference to an antecedent. For example, compare "I will do it myself," where "myself" is a self-intensifier indicating that nobody else did it, to "I sold myself," where "myself" fills the argument role of direct object. This sentence may be extended, as in "I sold myself myself," where the second pronoun emphasizes the fact that nobody helped me to sell myself.

Terminology

Self-intensifiers have also been called simply "intensifiers",König, Ekkehard, Peter Siemund & Stephan Töpper. 2005. Intensifiers and reflexives. In Martin Haspelmath, Matthew S. Dryer, David Gil & Bernard Comrie (eds.), The world atlas of language structures, 194–197. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://wals.info/chapter/112. or "emphatic reflexives", or "intensive reflexives". In many languages, they are similar or identical to reflexive pronouns.

In other languages

Latin has a dedicated intensifier, '' ipse'', ''-a'', ''-um'', used to emphasize a noun or pronoun in either a subject or a predicate of a sentence. In Danish, emphasis is indicated using the word ''selv''; "I will do it myself" is rendered ''Jeg gør det selv''. When a verb is used that requires reflexion, it becomes similar to English except that two words are used: "I help myself" is rendered ''Jeg hjælper mig selv''. In German, emphasis is indicated using the word ''selbst''. "I will do it myself" is rendered ''Ich werde es selbst tun''. Dutch usage of ''zelf'' is identical: ''Ik zal het zelf doen''. In Spanish, as in most other pro-drop languages, emphasis can be added simply by explicitly using the omissible pronoun. Following the above example, "I will do it myself" is rendered "Lo haré yo." Adding "mismo" after the pronoun yields additional emphasis. French uses a form of the disjunctive pronoun that is followed by the adverb (e.g. ). There are intensive forms of personal pronouns in Udmurt language, Komi language, and Tatar language, e.g., " ouourselves": Udmurt: 'асьтэос', Komi: 'асьныд', Tatar: 'үзегез'. In

Russian language Russian is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language belonging to the Balto-Slavic languages, Balto-Slavic branch of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It is one of the four extant East Slavic languages, and is ...

the intensifiers are 'sam' (masculine myself, masculine yourself, himself) / sama (feminine myself, feminine yourself, herself) / sami (*selves) and unlike English they differ from the reflexive modifier 'sebya', applicable to all pronouns. Intensifier pronouns may be used to intensify the 'base' pronoun: "ona sama vidit" ("She-herself-sees), as well as by themselves: "sama vidit" (herself-sees), because in Russian the base pronoun may be omitted, because it may be inferred from the declension of the verb. The same is with the

Belarusian language Belarusian (, ) is an East Slavic languages, East Slavic language. It is one of the two Languages of Belarus, official languages in Belarus, the other being Russian language, Russian. It is also spoken in parts of Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Polan ...

Terminology

In other languages

See also

References

Further reading