Sometimes it's ok to overeat yourself: Scalar oiw-particles/prepositions in Germanic languages that license an overt anaphor

The primary objective of this article is to provide a sketch of the most salient semantic and syntactic properties of a class of (relatively) non-productive activity verbs (often with an incremental theme) that involve some form of over-prefixation and require the presence of an overt weak pronominal anaphor. I argue here that the weak pronominal anaphor is the overt lexicalization of a pro element that resides in the specifier of DegP (^Degree Phrase) (following Epstein 1984). I also contend that these verbs form a class that has similar, if not analogous, properties of those commonly found with inherent reflexive verbs. Contrary to most treatments of these verbs, I argue that the anaphor in these constructions does receive a distinct theta-role (i.e., Standard).