Emphatic reflexives as part-structure modifiers

Abstract

The standard analysis of emphatic reflexives assumes that they are focused expressions of identity in all their uses (e.g. Gast 2006). On the basis of semantic and prosodic data, I argue that exclusive adverbial emphatic reflexives in Dutch and English should instead be analyzed as expressions excluding certain participants from the modified event (“P-exclusives”). The proposed analysis is based on Moltmann’s (2004) account of the part-structure modifier ‘alone’, and avoids a number of problems that the standard analysis has when applied to these data.