Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) 50 (2002) 3, 250-268. PETER SIEMUND Reflexive and Intensive self-forms across Varieties of English Abstract: Reflexive and intensive self-forms of English manifest remarkable variation – in both form and function – along the regional as well as the historical dimension. The subsequent article provides a fine-grained survey of the relevant parameters of variation in this domain while embedding the findings in current theories of reflexivity and intensification. 1. Introduction Although it is for many purposes practical and reasonable to neglect linguistic variation, the fact remains that several varieties of a language exist and coexist even within one and the same speaker. For several reasons the study of linguistic varieties is an important objective: It offers new and often intricate data to test linguistic theories on, it complements the study of language change since change presupposes variation, and it adds to our knowledge of the patterns and limits of variation found across languages. In discussing reflexive and intensive self-forms a topic has been chosen which roused and still rouses widespread interest both among theoreticians and typologists. Varieties of English can feed new and interesting data into these discussions and may even help to find answers to important theoretical controversies. At least four kinds of varieties can and are usually distinguished: social, functional, regional and historical. Social and functional varieties will not be considered in the subsequent discussion, which will put its main emphasis on data from different regions of the English speaking world. Nevertheless, the present article will also consider historical varieties to some extent, since today’s dialects frequently display features from older stages of English. One of the aims of our investigation in fact is to explore the relationship between regional and historical varieties relative to reflexivity and intensification. The emphasis of our survey will be put on morpho-syntactic features, much in keeping with the recent upsurge of interest in such properties of linguistic varieties (cf. Benincá 1989, Abraham & Bayer 1993, Black & Motapanyane 1996, Klemola 1996, Anderwald 2001, Kortmann 2001, Siemund 2001). English is quite peculiar among the European languages in that it does not draw a formal distinction between reflexive pronouns and what is here referred to as ‘intensifiers’ in a narrow use of this term, i.e. the two different functions of the self- forms in example (1) are not distinguished on the surface. (1) a. John criticised himself. (reflexive use of himself) b. The professor himself graded the written exams. (intensive use of himself) Most other European languages, notably German, have two different forms encoding these functions (cf. (2)). Siemund, Peter (2002) ‘Reflexive and intensive self-forms across varieties of English’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik (ZAA) 50 (2002) 3, 250-268.