All by ourselves

Knowledge of the basics of English grammar will help you to communicate clearly and confidently. Here, we review reflexive pronouns.

1. Personal and reflexive

Each personal pronoun has a corresponding reflexive pronoun. They end in -self in the singular form, and -selves in the plural:

2. Common usage

We use reflexive pronouns rather than non-reflexive object pronouns after a transitive verb when the (direct or indirect) object refers to the same person or thing as the subject:

I taught myself how to use the new system. 3. Common verbs

Whenever the subject and object of a transitive verb refer to the same thing or person, they are coreferential. In such cases, the object pronoun will be reflexive. Some verbs occur particularly often with reflexive pronouns: I need to familiarize myself

with your individual roles.

You shouldn’t blame yourself

for the mistake.

John will introduce himself to the team.

Prepare yourselves for a long weekend.

They should restrict themselves

to the first phase.

4. True reflexives

The following are examples of true reflexive verbs. The subject and object of these transitive verbs are always coreferential:

We don’t want to burn ourselves out. Let’s take a break! We enjoyed ourselves at the event.

We can really pride ourselves on our success.

5. Expressions for teamwork

If you want to promote team spirit, you can use “we” and the reflexive pronoun “ourselves”:

We need to remind ourselves of our individual achievements. We did ourselves proud.

5. Use for emphasis

Reflexive pronouns have another function. Use “by him- or herself” to show that the action occurred without anyone’s help:

She prepared everything by herself.

To emphasize that someone is alone or does something without any help, use all by oneself:

We can’t possibly deal with these requests all by ourselves.

We can add a reflexive pronoun directly after the subject to show that someone in particular does something, as opposed to someone else:

The CEO himself called me.

We can also add the pronoun to the end of a clause for more emphasis. Speakers of German will be reminded of selbst/selber in these cases:

I’ll do the update myself. 6. Personal pronouns in

prepositional phrases Reflexive pronouns can also appear in prepositional phrases other than “by oneself”:

She’s very pleased with herself. When he’s upset, he sometimes talks to himself.

However, after a preposition in a clause with a transitive verb, we generally use a personal pronoun — not a reflexive pronoun— even though the object of the preposition is coreferential with the subject of the verb:

She took the file with her.

(It would be a mistake to use herself here.)