A Multi-dimensional Study Of Chinese Reflexive Ziji: From BT To OT

The thesis presents an examine of syntactic and semantic theories of Chinese reflexive zijiChomsky's Binding Theory devices a relatively brief analytic motion for the syntactic and semantic relationship between of anaphoric expressions and their antecedents. But the classical Binding Theory cannot well predict distribution and binding relation of Chinese reflexive ziji and its antecedent because ziji sometimes violates the local requirement imposed by binding condition A, and enjoys more freedom in the choice of antecedents than English reflexives. For the recent decades many solutions to ziji's local and long-distance binding have been proposed on diverse kinds by refining and revising the Binding Theory in both syntactic and non-syntactic fields. It is shown that mono-linguistic approaches have some limitations in accounting for the reference of long-distance reflexive ziji since ziji-binding is not an isolated matter of syntax, but needs the interaction of syntactic principles with semantic and discourse factors.The constraint-based theories Head-driven Phrase Structure grammar (HPSG) and Lexical Functional Grammar (LFG) integrate syntax and semantics in the account of anaphoric study. HPSG binding principle indicates that the long-distance binding of ziji is realized by adopting semantic feature acquisition and agreement together with the interaction of discourse rules. LFG defines binding at the level of functional structure as well as argument structure and constituent structure. It views that subjective dimension, nuclear dimension, and logophoric dimension play central roles in anaphoric binding system. And the interaction of prominence and locality derives different possibility in pronominal binding.In the spirit of Optimality Theory, the difference in ranking constraints on prominence and locality can account for the difference interpretation on reflexive binding in different languages. Based on Hu and Pan's study, the reference of ziji is constraints by the principle of prominence; and the binding domains for compound and bare reflexives are determined by the candidate sets related to the most prominent NP chosen by referential feature searching engine and phi-feature searching engine. The OT treatment of natural language interpretation which takes the bidirectional perspective from both the speaker and hearer...