Chinese Reflexives Revisited--from Syntax to Pragmatics

• Main Authors: Hui-Chu Emma Yeh, 葉惠珠
• Other Authors: Prof. Chun-yin Doris Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2001
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/02005930451000567086

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 89 === The Chinese reflexive is characterized by long-distance binding and nominative/possessive uses. So often the antecedent and the reflexive are not coarguments of the minimal propositional domain. Motivated by such cases, this thesis thus argues that the possibility for a reflexive to escape from the locality constraint stated in Chomsky’s (1981) Principle A of Binding theory is related to the fact that the reflexive has no less oblique coargument to refer to. If a reflexive is not coargument-bound, it is Infl-bound. It is shown that an Infl may inherit its nominal features, which it can pass onto the reflexive it binds, from a superordinate linguistic context or from the discourse. As Infl is identified outside the local clause domain, an Infl-bound reflexive may hence exhibit long-distance binding. Given the distinction of the two types of binding, the differences between Chinese and English are predicted: English reflexives are mostly coargument-bound, so they are generally locally confined, whereas in Chinese Infl-binding is always applied (due to the pro-drop possibility and the pervasive subject use of the reflexives), so the reflexives may refer to a remote antecedent. As for the fact that the compound reflexive in Chinese usually requires a local antecedent, I suggest it follow from a theory of implicature in pragmatics. The use of ta-ziji M(anner)-implicates an emphatic reading, which thus encourages a local coreferential interpretation.