Self-forms in Caxton's Paris and Vienne

Abstract

This paper discusses the development of reflexive self-forms in the history of English, exploring William Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and two related French versions of the same text. It is known that self was in origin a simple intensifier, which occurred only optionally in earlier English. In Paris and Vienne, both simple personal pronouns and self-forms were used in the reflexive. The inventory of self-forms in this text, namely my self, thy self, your self, hym self, hyr self and them self, was already stable, with hym self being the most frequent. Also, self-forms were more commonly employed in prepositional phrases than as verbal complements. A comparative analysis of the English and French versions indicate that Caxton’s reflexive forms often correspond to French pronominal verbs, although the English and French verbs involved are not necessarily etymologically linked. Overall, simple reflexive pronouns rather than self-forms tended to occur with verbs of lower transitivity. For this final point, more extensive research into various verbs is needed from semantic and typological perspectives.