Comparative Study On Refelexive Expressions Between English And Chinese

Reflexive expressions are one of the common expressions shared by both English and Chinese. Nevertheless, lexical expressions that two languages employ are differentiated in terms of morphological features, syntactic distributions and semantic readings, and etc. This paper tends to implement more delicate observation, description as well as analysis of reflexive expressions between English and Chinese in order to figure out the inherent operating mechanisms.On the basis of the previous, studies, the author will carefully observe a multitude of the language facts and reveal the similarities and differences with regard to lexical properties;in other words, English reflexive pronouns bear the features[+anaphor,-pronominal] while Chinese equivalences possess [+anaphor,+generic]. The similarities of grammatical functions lie in that English and Chinese reflexive expressions could serve as objects, appositives and predicative. They differ from each other, inasmuch as English counterpart can not serve the functions of subjects and attributes. Moreover, the similarity on the part of syntactic distributions is that English and Chinese reflexive expressions can appear in the head or complement of a DP, and the adjunct of a VP. From pragmatic point of view, they both enjoy the anaphoric and emphatic functions, but Chinese "ziji" has its unique generic use that can not be seen in most western languages such as English. In sample and embedded sentences, English reflexive pronouns and Chinese "ziji" both abide by Principle A put forward by Chomsky when they seek the antecedents, that is, they have to be bound by the accessible subject in its respective governing category (minimum DP or TP that includes reflexive expression and accessible subject);The so-called "long-distance binding" of "ziji" actually does not disobey Principle A:in the DP that contains "ziji", an empty pronoun could appear in the head of that DP which binds "ziji" in the local domain-DP; additionally, the study of the syntactic distribution of "ziji" and DP as well as VP structures will undoubtedly support the study of "blocking effects" from a cognitive point of view, which include person, number and gender blockings.This paper focuses on the syntactic points of view in the exploration of the similarities and differences between their mechanisms'to find antecedents. Furthermore, this paper aims to prove that the syntactic distributions of English reflexive pronouns and Chinese "ziji" in the minimum DP or TP that contains them and accessible subject determine their mechanisms to find antecedents.In the final analysis, the paper demonstrates that reflexive meanings are a universal expression in human languages. We should admit that the expressive methods are distinguished and their expressive forms do not have to. correspond to each other, namely, Chinese does not need a compound reflexive pronoun with equivalent forms;thus, Chinese "pronoun+ziji" is supposed to be a phrase other than a word.