plural reflexive pronouns – English Grammar Profiler

Here are two B2 points in the English Grammar Profile in the category of PRONOUNS:

Point 80:

plural reflexive pronouns for emphasis.

Point 83:

plural reflexive pronouns to refer to actions where the subject and object of the verb are the same.

This overlaps many other reflexive pronoun points and ’emphasis’ is not something corpus searches will do automatically. We can quite easily search for complex levels of collocations in B2 student’s work though. The embedded examples come from the first 75% of the PELIC.

In iWeb, you cannot search for collocates near a Part of Speech tag, so here is a search in iWeb for _ppx2:

1 THEMSELVES 2003616 2 EACH 1162768 3 OTHER 1159004 4 OURSELVES 592096 5 YOURSELVES 71276

~~6 THEIRSELVES 478~~ = dialect form of themselves.

iWeb times out for a similar search of ‘themselves|each other|ourselves|yourselves|theirselves‘

After removing ‘each other’ we can get collocates 4 spaces on either side of ‘themselves|ourselves|yourselves|theirselves‘:

1 FIND 117154
2 PRIDE 38622

1402,fg8,Chinese,Female,117,5,w,119,1,753

You should protect yourselves from being cheated or even being raped.

1402,fg8,Chinese,Female,117,5,w,119,1,753

People can make up their identities for protecting themselves, fun, or other purposes.

4914,bw3,Korean,Female,205,4,g,594,1,108

It could have been an weapon for protecting themselves from scary things

11539,dg3,Japanese,Male,217,4,r,1667,1,175

When Caral fell, people buried their structures to protect themselves.

11588,gx2,Japanese,Female,227,4,w,1657,1,733

Although it is a common idea that we need weapons and forces because we have to protect our country and ourselves, historically it is almost impossible for a country that has the strong forces to control it completely and peacefully.

11645,fp9,Korean,Male,226,4,w,1673,1,263

They were a tribe society and they want to protect themselves.

18362,gu0,Korean,Male,349,5,w,2525,1,1598

Since it is almost impossible to eliminate or limit the dramas and movies that contain violent elements in them, it must be important for every people to keep dealing with that kind of media carefully and protect themselves from the violence.

25282,ck2,Arabic,Female,533,5,r,3259,1,127

The Achuar does not want the rainforest destroyed and this is the best way to protect the environment and ourselves.

26050,an2,Arabic,Male,514,3,w,3422,2,105

Finally, we cannot leave the fuel but can plant silviculture and it will assist us in protect ourselves.

26061,cu8,Chinese,Female,529,4,w,3438,1,508

Lover had sex before they get marry, and they did not protect themselves well which made them have a baby.

26554,fo4,Chinese,Female,529,4,w,3475,1,370

We need to protect our environment not only for ourselves, but also for plants and animals.

27375,dv1,Arabic,Male,534,5,w,3597,1,1284

From this point, countries which do not have nuclear weapons work to have them relying on protecting themselves from here starts the problem.

30280,bj0,Chinese,Female,566,4,w,4005,1,323

How can New York’s residents protect themselves to live in New York?

30310,bf8,Thai,Male,566,4,w,4005,1,306

Those people can learn what is a swine flu and how to protect themselves from it by reading newspaper.

31037,ev6,Chinese,Female,570,4,r,4061,1,73

Third, the protection of animals is to protect human beings themselves!

31398,dn8,Thai,Female,591,5,w,4172,1,1160

People who are for animal rights say that animal cannot protect themselves from being harm by humans (Unknown, Animal Testing:Arguments for).

34526,gv7,Korean,Male,642,5,w,4531,1,330

At that time, Korea didn’t have an ability to protect ourselves from the sudden attack of the enemy.

34527,ah4,Turkish,Male,642,5,w,4531,1,216

Every single country has own government system, principles or military rules in order to protect themselves and keep living comfortably.

34528,bn7,Arabic,Male,642,5,w,4531,1,221

These countries want to protect themselves from their oppositions or from any dangerous thing.

35755,dw7,Japanese,Female,642,5,w,4642,1,564

Furthermore, it is also advantageous for casinos because they can protect themselves from linking with any illegal crime group.

36489,cs0,Arabic,Male,696,5,w,4731,1,677

People everywhere can get serious diseases if they don’t have enough acknowledgment about how to protect themselves.

4 EXPRESS 18798
5 SPEAK 17531

11441,co0,Arabic,Male,215,4,r,1669,1,389

The Quran is very clear that the believers must defend themselves but never ever to aggress.

18338,ck9,Chinese,Male,354,5,w,2523,1,525

Admittedly, military power is necessary for every country to defend themselves.

31348,ah4,Turkish,Male,574,4,g,4116,1,148

In addition, we may able to defend ourselves against wild animals by using the knife.

34521,gm1,Chinese,Female,642,5,w,4531,1,207

Maybe sometimes they need military to defend themselves.

34527,ah4,Turkish,Male,642,5,w,4531,1,216

Throughout the history, countries have tried to defend themselves against external forces as establishing big military.

35510,ah5,Portuguese,Female,638,5,w,4597,1,1434

To defend themselves, pharmaceutical companies discusses that the protection of patent laws allow them to recover from the economic expenses and investments made in research and development of drugs.

7 LEND 10792
8 AMONGST 7840

29574,az3,Taiwanese,Female,565,4,r,3904,1,138

Mike Manko, the District Attorney, said students can bring evidence, including recommendations, to court to prove themselves‘ innocent, but he also thought that “each case is individually and has its merit “.

34909,dm8,Chinese,Female,640,5,g,4560,1,122

She told us to prove ourselves.

10 IMMERSE 7339
11 EDUCATE 6318

29087,ag9,Korean,Female,581,5,w,3861,1,134,

It reminded me to unify the citizens each other with this event as a momentum.

11688,cg3,Japanese,Female,230,5,w,1679,1,799

Most of them regard hikikomori as a shame and parents blame themselves for making their children hikikomori.

29624,el7,Other,Female,571,4,w,3943,1,307

Children blame themselves that their parents do not live together; thus, divorce can cause lots of stress and be harmful to the growth of a child.

36355,cs0,Arabic,Male,695,5,r,4724,1,101

They cried, blamed themselves, and went quickly toward the closet.

2143,ge7,Arabic,Male,154,5,g,207,1,362

After helping him they both introduce each other.

3941,fb4,Korean,Female,205,4,g,436,1,218

However, because the homes where we lived were very close, we met each other often, and talked about our lives, our boyfriends, whom we introduced to each other whenever we met new one, and so on.

12533,bu4,Korean,Female,287,5,w,1814,1,698

At that time two girls started to talk to me, they introduced themselves that came from Ecuador and were travelers like me.

We introduced ourselves one another, and got on his car. (same text)

22818,fh4,German,Female,489,4,g,2988,1,125

We shaked hands and introduced each other.

31079,at4,Japanese,Female,591,5,w,4113,1,988

For example, in the ELI night, when we introduced foods of various cultures each other, I could know various kinds of cuisines from Asia, Midwest, Europe, and traditional thanksgiving food in the US.

16 DIFFERENTIATE 5032 17 FEND 4844 18 COMMIT 4813 19 REVEAL 4645 20 FAMILIARIZE 4395 21 MANIFEST 4393 22 UNTO 4187 23 DISTINGUISH 3835 24 CHRISTIANS 3761

7648,bl2,Thai,Female,228,4,w,1129,2,653

The expectation from anyone who surrounds the students and the students themselves can make them get the pressures.

30 ALIGN 2957 31 DEDICATE 2945 32 EXPRESSING 2933 33 DISTINGUISHED 2855 34 EXPOSE 2734 35 HUMBLE 2661

16747,bm6,Arabic,Male,357,5,g,2329,1,204

Feeling board and upset is a normal thing for students so, they like to watch movies to entertain themselves.

41 GOVERN 2111 42 ACCOUNTABLE 2102 43 YE 2097 44 PERCEIVE 2075 45 REINVENT 1981 46 HURTING 1910 47 POSITIONING 1893 48 FAMILIARISE 1813 49 BELIEVING 1798

As usual for a B2 grammar point, we look for B1 vocabulary to make it easy on the student to grasp, but not too easy.

(themselves|each other|ourselves|yourselves|theirselves)