A Comparison Between Syntactic And Non-syntactic Study Of The Boundedness Of Chinese Reflexives

Chinese reflexives can be divided into two major categories: complex reflexives and simple reflexive"ziji". Compared with English reflexives, Chinese reflexives, especially the simple reflexive"ziji"have their own distinctive features: (1) long-distance binding (2) subcommanding subject (3) subject orientation and (4) blocking effect. The present work takes Chinese reflexives as its object of the research, analyzing and interpreting the binding features of them, especially the simple reflexive"ziji". The aim of my present research is to reveal the limitation of Chomsky's Binding Theory as well as to probe into and find the causes for the unique binding features of Chinese reflexives.The studies on the Chinese reflexivization can roughly be divided into two groups: syntactic study and non-syntactic study. It is shown that in dealing with the boundedness of Chinese reflexives, syntactic study is not complete, reasonable or clear enough; non-syntactic study is short of strong theory basis. Different from previous analyses, the present paper explains it not only from the syntactic perspective but also from the non-syntactic perspective. Further more, with the help of the self-ascription theory and OT theory, in addition to being able to explain many facts concerning the distinct features of the simple reflexive"ziji", the paper also clearly demonstrates and explains the features of Chinese complex reflexive"ta+ziji". Meanwhile, a comparison between a semantics-pragmatics-discourse-based study and syntactic study is made in this paper.With the methodology of linguistic theory descriptive, fact dependency, comparative and inductive research methods, the paper is spread out in six chapters. Chapter 1 reviews Chomsky's Binding Theory and some related concepts. In Chapter 2 we describe the main characteristics of the bare reflexive form ziji in Chinese, Chapter 3 analyzes and evaluates the studies conducted within the framework of Government and Binding, Chapter 4 puts forward morphological analysis of"ziji"conducted by Cheng Gong and points out that Hu Jianhua & Pan Haihua's self-ascription and optimality-theoretic account of"ziji"is considered perfect compared with other analyses. In Chapter 5 we make an analysis of some so-called compound reflexive forms such as woziji(我自己) and niziji(你自己) compared with English reflexives. The interpretation of taziji(他自己)is emphasized with the help of OT theory. Finally, in Chapter 6 0a brief comparison between syntactic study and non-syntactic study is made in the conclusion.After a careful study, the paper argues that both syntactic study and Cheng Gong's morphological analysis of"ziji"have some limitations in accounting for the distinctive features of Chinese reflexives since they do not consider syntactic, semantic, pragmatic and discourse factors that may influence the interpretation of reflexives. The prominence of the antecedents plays an important role in determining the reference of Chinese reflexives. The present thesis offers a detailed description of reflexive forms in modern Chinese and discusses the validity of Binding Principle A. We hope that the proposition of self-ascription and OT theory can solve the boundedness of Chinese reflexives perfectly.