extraposing emphatic reflexives

cohen (1999) notes that the meaning of the emphatic reflexive can’t just depend on syntactic distribution. that is, while previous researchers (like edmondson and plank (1978)) had tried to nail down the difference between the adverbal and the adnominal emphatic reflexive as an issue due to their syntactic placement (and hence semantic combinatorics), cohen dismisses this, showing that things just aren’t that simple. for example, we know that the adnominal emphatic reflexive tends to impart some feeling of remarkability or surprise, while the adverbal emphatic reflexive contributes a presupposition that the subject of the sentence was the sole agent of the event described.

(1) although john was sick all week, he himself came out barhopping last night.
(2) john drank that whole bottle of whiskey himself.

cohen noticed, however, that you can get the remarkability reading even in adverbal positions
(3) the king himself invited me to the party
(4) the king invited me to the party himself

(4) is ambiguous between the remarkability reading and the sole agent reading because it is possible for the event of inviting to involve multiple agents. if we have a verb that denotes an event that cannot involve multiple agents, however, we get an unambiguous interpretation of the emphatic reflexive as carrying the remarkability presupposition.

(5) the great thing about firebreathing is that the flame gives off so much heat. if you’re watching someone breathe fire, you can feel the heat, but when you’re firebreathing yourself, the surge of heat is intense.

more on this to come..

also, i’m really diggin’ the new nathan fake album. holla.