A Syntactic And Non-Syntactic Study On Chinese Reflexive Ziji

It is widely assumed that Chinese reflexive ziji is an anaphor (in the sense of having to be bound in a certain syntactically defined domain) with three characteristic properties: the long-distance binding, subject orientation, the blocking effect, which attracts the attention of linguists. Much research has focused on accounting for the fact about ziji within the framework of Chomsky's (1981, 1986) binding theory, seeking a purely syntactic interpretation of Chinese reflexive ziji, but this approach cannot provide an adequate explanation. Taking its special properties into account, recent studies on ziji seek other syntactic approaches or non-syntactic (semantic, pragmatic or discoursal) approaches, even mixed approaches to explain the relation between ziji and its antecedent. But neither of the two is an accurate way because they are not explanatory, lacking compact theories for the interpretation of all properties of ziji.With this in mind, we assume that both the syntactic and the non-syntactic aspects are playing important roles in interpreting the properties of Chinese reflexive ziji. Therefore, a fundamental distinction must be drawn between syntactic and non-syntactic reflexives. Reflexive manifesting or covertly manifesting the common properties (the long-distance binding, the subject orientation and the blocking effect) are syntactic reflexives, and those manifesting different properties are non-syntactic reflexives.The feature checking approach is adopted to analyze the syntactic reflexives in this thesis. The approach to reflexive binding within Chomsky's (1995) Milimalist Program does not rely on the government relation and the governing category. Instead, the approach will be based on the spec-head relation and the theory of feature checking. On the basis of Reinhart and Reuland's (1993) analysis, we argue that a predicate may be specified for a formal [+REFL] reflexive feature which must be checked against a reflexive such that reflexives must undergo XP-movement at LF and check a formal reflexive [+REFL] feature against a local predicate in a spec-head relation. The interpretation of non-syntactic reflexive ziji is related to logophoricity which involves reference to an individual whose (a) speech or thought (Source), (b) point of view or perspective (Self), (c) general state of consciousness are expressed in the discourse (Pivot) (Clements 1975).