The Grammar of Identity: Intensifiers and Reflexives in Germanic Languages

All major Germanic languages except Yiddish have intensifiers that have developed from the reconstructed Proto-Germanic form *selba-. For example, in English we have herself, in Icelandic there is sj´alfur and in Gothic - silba.
This book deals with the question of why intensifiers and reflexives are formally indistinguishable in so many languages of the world. Using evidence from germanic languages, this is a semasiological study on the family of self-forms in Germanic languages.

Approved by Englishcology