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

3 PROTECT 31868

PELI students:

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

6 DEFEND 16051

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

9 PROVE 7468

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

12 REMIND 6192

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.

13 ENJOYING 5618

14 BLAME 5357

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.

15 INTRODUCE 5279

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
25 CONVINCE 3678
26 ATTACH 3589
27 AVAIL 3404
28 DEVOTE 3125

29 SURROUND 3021

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
36 ASHAMED 2553
37 BRACE 2519
38 DEFENDING 2518
39 SUSTAIN 2210

40 ENTERTAIN 2130

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
50 DECLARE 1770
51 EXPOSING 1700
52 ASSERT 1598
53 DECEIVE 1572
54 ISOLATE 1545
55 EDUCATING 1534
56 PRIDES 1436
57 INJURE 1428
58 EMPOWER 1395
59 CONFINE 1364
60 ENRICH 1345
61 IMMERSING 1338
62 COMMITTING 1318
63 PRIDED 1292
64 DISGUISE 1243
65 INDULGE 1228
66 REDEEM 1177
67 DISTANCED 1164
68 REMINDING 1154
69 OUTDONE 1152
70 FOOLING 1146
71 IMMERSED 1136
72 FOOLS 1130
73 DELUDE 1116
74 AMUSE 1109
75 KIDDING 1101
76 ORIENT 1088
77 PORTRAY 1067
78 DISTANCING 1049
79 APOSTLES 1049
80 EQUIP 1045
81 EXERT 1026
82 INCAPABLE 1013
83 ORGANISE 965
84 RESIGN 924
85 HARMING 923
86 VOLUNTARILY 908
87 ACQUAINT 898
88 PROPEL 887
89 WILLINGLY 881
90 DISTRACT 879
91 BURY 872

It should be easy to see that this grammar point is surrounded by very high vocabulary:

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.

*The embedded searches above come by searching for:

[\w\s]*

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