[Vocabulary] brought her troubles on herself

[Silverobama]

Hi.

I read the following sentence in Cambridge.org.

I don't have much sympathy for her - I think she's brought her troubles on herself.

I think the italic part is redundant. Am I right?

I think it should either be "brought herself troubles" or "brought troubles on herself".

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

It's correct as written. No one else caused her troubles. She caused them herself. She brought them on herself.

 

[GoesStation]

To bring your troubles on yourself is a fixed phrase. Your versions are grammatically correct but their meanings are different from the original.

 

[jutfrank]

You can generalise the pattern to:

bring something on oneself

It's confusing to parse this structure. The on doesn't go with oneself, but with bring. In other words, oneself is not the object of the preposition on, but adverbial to the phrasal verb bring on. Let me show you:

A: She brought it on herself. :tick:
B: She brought it on herself. :cross:



Edit: After giving this some thought, and having considered several examples, I've begun to doubt the way I've parsed the pattern. Would other members please let me know whether they agree with me? Which is correct—A or B?

 

[GoesStation]

Edit: After giving this some thought, and having considered several examples, I've begun to doubt the way I've parsed the pattern. Would other members please let me know whether they agree with me? Which is correct—A or B?

It looks like B to my untrained eyes.

 

[GoesStation]

I tried to put aside the expression bring it on!​ when evaluating parsing A.

 

[jutfrank]

I tried to put aside the expression bring it on!​ when evaluating parsing A.

Actually, I don't think that use is wholly irrelevant.

I think there's a very basic sense of the phrasal verb bring on to mean something like 'cause to happen'. This example from thefreedictionary.com is a good one:

This warm weather is great, but it's also brought on my allergies, unfortunately.

I think this is a good example because it shows the use of bring on as a phrasal verb (meaning that on is a particle semantically connected to the verb bring) rather than simply as the verb bring followed by a preposition phrase (*on my allergies).

My understanding is that the pattern bring something on oneself follows a similar structure, the difference being that the referent of the reflexive pronoun (i.e. the person denoted by 'oneself') is the cause, rather than any other external cause, such as the weather.

As I say, I'm not completely convinced by my explanation. However, I believe that an assessment of the grammaticality of the sentence below is a good test of whether the way I'm parsing things is right.

She brought on her troubles herself :?:

What do you think?