Jaume Solà i Pujols - Departament de Filologia Catalana ...

This suggests that in these languages, the emphatic element in 0.a/.b/.c) is a SELF
element 41 left floating by DP-movement to Spec of AGR. So the structure of 0.a) would be 0.b)
(and the same could be claimed for the other two languages):
(59) a. John has done it himself
b. [ AGRP Johni [ AGR' has done it [ DP ti himself] ]] 42
We could call the emphasis added to a DP by SELF elements 'referential emphasis': in
John himself, what is emphasized is that we are referring precisely to John. That is why these
elements cannot be adjoined to a non-referential DP (whatever 'non-referential' means):
*everybody herself, *nobody himself, etc. For some reason, however, when these elements are
separated from the element they are construed with they can be used with non-referential DPs:
(60) Everybody/nobody did the work herself/himself/themselves
Therefore, if, as we argued, these elements are floating elements in 0, floating is relevant
41 The etymology could be misleading here: English himself in
John himself is a SELF element, whereas self alone is not (*John
self). The same is true for French lui-même (Jean lui-même,
*Jean même). I think that the fact that the spelling of
self/même indicates attachment to the pronoun is significative
(as is often the case with spelling): these elements have lost
their original status of independent morphemes (English self can
in addition be a prefixed form -as in self (*balanced)
criticism).
42 So (i) and (ii) differ in that in (i) himself has not been
left floating, while in (ii) it has:
(i) John himself has done it
(ii) John has done it himself
The interpretation of (i) and (ii) is not the same (as S.
Vikner pointed out to me). I think this interpretative
difference should be derived from the Focus interpretation that
is associated with the sentence-final himself, which is lacking
in (i).
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