[Sic]

* * * * By J. L. Speranza, F. R. S. (failed), &c
* * * * * * * for the Grice Club, &c.


* * * * ONE LEARNS THINGS from Kramer (and others!) but here I want to comment on things (and other) one learns (and other) from Kramer (none other!).

We are discussing 'hisself', and I should be brief enough! (That's _KRAMER_'s maxim, if maxim it is. We are trying to give it transcendental justificatory lines along piro-technics -- bad pun that one but note mine, but Ian C.!).

I do use "hisself" as a joke, sort of. Or used, because, etc. But I was thinking: and I'll have to be brief (inter alia because my headache has _not_ subsided!). When I reclaim a piece of 'dialect' it's usually because I found it charming (that's subjective) but more to the point, 'rational', and mainly to irritate my mother. She Kant Say Hisself. She Won't. She Thinks It's WRONG.

I THINK in HOTEL maybe, but maybe somewhere else and I may have the records, somewhere, I did dig the OED for this. Nothing too inspirational, but --.

Now, in a comment on this log (unfortunately the search engine is a bother), Kramer does mention that the hisself is pretty illogical. A waste. His argument, provocative and good, is that 'self' is a dangler there:

I hit me self.


So he is on record and rightly so as saying that the proper spelling for 'myself' should be 'meself'. I was thinking. "Well, then surely I can start using meself and youself to irritate (or annoy) my mother. Sadly, she won't care. There's a hissing sound in the hissssself that she finds aggravating. Whereas she'll probably thinks that 'meself' IS the 'correct' way to pronounce 'myself' anyways (sic).

---- Now, as I say, and I don't think I will access the OED on this (for the time being), one wonders about the free-standing, 'self' there.

Kramer suggests that it's related, if I understood him alright, with 'same-self'. Which indeed is used by people (philosophers, too, like I think Locke, in his discussion of Personal Identity, or Hobbes in his earlier discussion of the ship who had itself sameself turned into a pyre, or something).

So, syntactically, it would seem that the 'self' is a parenthetical. (We use this ironically, with Kramer, to refer to Urmson, since surely the important use of "I believe" is _NOT_ parenthetical. It's the one that precedes a 'that'-clause).

I did think that a reference _was_ being made to 'his self'. Similarly, C. L. Dodgson proposed to spell, 'he do'n't', I think. He felt there was a ''' missing, I recall or seem to recall.

The problem, or one of the problems, is the nominative position of the 'hisself'. And one would need good evidence of OE declensions for possessives, too. Because I wouldn't be surprised if it was Hoemmmselfbst in Anglo-Saxon, with an mmm sound rather than the 'sss' sound in 'hisself'.

But I do think that this may have Anglo-Saxon provenance, or something.

Now, Trudgill compiled a paper, "In the Appalachians they Speak Like Shakespeare". This has been sort of debunked, mainly on the basis that Shakespeare did not speak, but spoke. So, it's more likely that what's going on here, and this actually appeals to me, is the

REGULARISATION

-- one of the few instances where I'm happy to speak about Latin 'regulae'. For it seems that the mechanism that gives rise to the 'hisself' is the incomprehensibility of the 'himself'. "Him self", _sic_ with a pause or space in between seem alright. But the HIMSELF in one fell swoop seems to be behind these hypercorrecting lot that we refer, with charm, as the hillbillies.

On the other hand, ...

---------------------------- To bed!

Later,

JLS