Analysis Of Chinese Ziji And English Self-Forms Based On HPSG Binding Theory

Reflexives, as a kind of referentially dependent anaphors, undoubtedly have to do with both syntax and contextual factors in finding their antecedents. Pure syntactic or non-syntactic theories can never be claimed to be sufficient in its explanatory power of the binding issue of reflexives. Instead, both syntactic and non-syntactic factors should come into play. Therefore, HPSG Binding Theory, which, as a synthetic approach to binding, integrates syntax with non-syntactic factors, is superior to Chomsky's GB theory which is an exemplar of syntactic autonomy in handling reflexive binding.This thesis firstly reviews the study on Chinese and English reflexives in the literature briefly, only to find that neither a pure syntactic approach nor a pure non-syntactic approach holds water all the time. Syntactic, semantic and pragmatic factors should all come into play in reflexive binding.In this paper, we insist that, in both English and Chinese, syntactic reflexives should be separated from non-syntactic ones. Respectively, reflexives which are subject to the syntactic A-principle under HPSG Binding Theory belong to the syntactic category, i.e. Chinese instances of subject-orientation and long-distance binding, and the ones which must have their co-reference determined in accordance with non-syntactic factors belong to the non-syntactic category, such as logophors and Chinese specific non-agreement blocking effect and sub-commanding.Moreover, we also hold in this paper that intensive reflexives which are meant for the use of intensification also belong to the non-syntactic category of reflexives. They have such properties as follows: they are dual-attributed to modify either nominal phrases or verbal phrases; to trigger different semantic reading of sentences according to different contexts; should be differentiated from the identificational focus (IF) due to their differences in semantics and syntactic distribution. Last, but not the least, we argue against such a polysemy hypothesis as syntactic distribution of intensive reflexives determines the semantic reading of sentences. We demonstrate abundant linguistic data to show that semantic property of sentences should be jointly determined by intensive reflexives and the whole contextual condition.