2. Reflexive Pronouns

Reflexive pronouns are words that end in -self or -selves such as myself , yourself and themselves . They are used to show that the subject of the sentence that performs an action is the same as the object that receives the action ; that is, the subject acts on itself as expressed by the verb in the sentence. The subject of the sentence has to be a personal pronoun for a reflexive pronoun to refer back to the subject. The reflexive pronoun acts as the direct object. It can also be an indirect object.

There are altogether eight reflexive pronouns and none of these are used as the subject of a sentence . Each personal pronoun has a corresponding reflexive pronoun which is formed by adding –self to the singular and –selves to the plural pronouns as shown in the following table.

	Personal Pronouns		Reflexive Pronouns
	Singular	Plural	Singular	Plural
First person	I	We	myself	ourselves
Second person	You	You	yourself	yourselves
Third person	He	They	himself	themselves
	She	They	herself	themselves
	It	They	itself	themselves

Examples:

Sometimes I think to myself that it is time to lose some weight.
Why do you often talk to yourself but seldom to other people?
He helped himself to the drinks and promised not to get drunk.
She likes to look at the mirror and smile to herself .
We do not always make ourselves practice what we preach.
One of the dogs spent hours licking itself . .
They spent some time familiarizing themselves with the new workplace.

The subject and the object are the same person. The antecedent subject pronoun comes first and the reflexive pronoun refers to it. If we don’t use the reflexive pronoun, the meaning changes as shown by this example.

Examples:

She baked herself a birthday cake.
She baked her a birthday cake.
(The second sentence says she baked a birthday cake for someone else.)

Besides those in the tables above, there is another reflexive pronoun: oneself .

Examples:

One has to improve oneself all the time. .
One shouldn’t expect others to behave in the same way as oneself .
It is important that one thinks positively about oneself .
( Not : one thinks positively about himself/herself.)