An In-depth Corpus-based Investigation of Unbound Reflexives

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper provides a comprehensive study of real-life uses of unbound reflexives (URs) in two syntactic structures, coordination and prepositional object structures, using a large amount of synchronic, diachronic, and dialectal corpus data from some Brigham Young University (BYU) corpora. Our findings show that 1) in contemporary American English, URs have different raw frequencies and proportion patterns in the two syntactic structures from anaphoric/cataphoric reflexives and also vary according to their person values; 2) the uses of URs in the two structures have shown decreasing tendencies for the past 200 years in American English; and 3) URs are more frequently used in Irish English than any other inner-circle variety of English in relation to anaphoric reflexives, which is more prominent in coordination structures than in prepositional object structures. Our findings also contribute to providing an empirical foundation for testing existing theories of URs and developing Binding Conditions in general.