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Title:
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Locality, Self-Ascription, Discourse Prominence, and Mandarin Reflexives
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Author:
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Haihua Pan
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Homepage:
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http://ctlhpan.cityu.edu.hk/haihuapan/
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Degree Awarded:
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University of Texas at Austin
, Department of Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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1995
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Semantics
Syntax
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Subject Language(s):
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Chinese, Mandarin
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Director(s):
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Manfred Krifka
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Abstract:
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Mandarin reflexive 'ziji' has challenged many syntacticians to probe for its properties, specifically its relationship to Binding Condition A (BCA), which dictates that an anaphor must be bound by a syntactically prominent (or c-commanding) noun phrase in a very local domain (Governing Category or GC). The basic strategy employed by most analyses is to try to show that BCA also applies to 'ziji', even though 'ziji' apparently violates it by allowing long-distance binding. Based on textual search of large corpora on the usage of 'ziji', 'benren', 'beshen', zishen', and their compound forms, this thesis claims that a semantic factor 'self-ascription' and a discourse factor 'prominence' play an essential role in the interpretation of Mandarin reflexives.
Following the spirit of Baker (1994) who makes a fundamenntal distinction between syntactic binding and discourse prominence, this thesis argues for the separation of contrastive and non-contrastive reflexives. While members of the former are constrained by discourse prominnence, members of the latter are constrained by either locality or self-ascription. The thesis further argues that two uses of non-contrastive 'ziji' should be recognized. While the first, including 'ta-ziji', is constrained by locality and compatability conditions, the other is regulated by self-ascription; that is, the self-ascription 'ziji' is a 'de se' anaphor, borrowing Lewis' terminology, and must thus be bound to the most prominent self-ascriber.
(Note: the dissertation was later published as a book under the title 'Constraints on Reflexivization in Mandarin Chinese' in the Outstanding Dissertation in Linguistics series by Garland in 1997.)
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