Origins and Usage
In Indo-European languages, the reflexive pronoun has its origins in Proto-Indo-European. In some languages, the distinction between the normal object and reflexive pronouns exists mainly in the third person: whether one says "I liHGFGtion when the subject and the object are the same (e.g., "That man is talking to himself."), and to emphasize the subject through an intensive pronoun (e.g., "They ate all the food themselves.")
Read more about this topic: Reflexive Pronoun
Famous quotes containing the words origins and, origins and/or usage:
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (18871962)
“The settlement of America had its origins in the unsettlement of Europe. America came into existence when the European was already so distant from the ancient ideas and ways of his birthplace that the whole span of the Atlantic did not widen the gulf.”
—Lewis Mumford (18951990)
“I am using it [the word perceive] here in such a way that to say of an object that it is perceived does not entail saying that it exists in any sense at all. And this is a perfectly correct and familiar usage of the word.”
—A.J. (Alfred Jules)