Long-distance Reflexives - an Asian Perspective

Although the canonical binding theory developed by Chomsky (1981) has a strong foundation in the typology of anaphoric forms, it is also well known that there are many languages in which some forms that can be used as local reflexives can also take antecedents outside their local domain (henceforth long-distance reflexives). These “exceptions” then lead to the discussion in this sub-field of binding theory on whether one should abandon or revise Chomsky's Binding Condition A, namely that an anaphor should be bound in its governing category, or rethink the assumption that long distance bound reflexives are indeed anaphors that are directly bound long-distance.In this project, we plan to investigate the anaphoric systems in Asian languages such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean, which receive less attention, compared to those in European languages, but still retain a lot of controversy regarding the description of their properties as well as their accounts. More specifically, we attempt to examine the Chinese long-distance reflexive ziji and give it a discourse-based analysis based on Oshima’s (2004, 2007) distinction on logophoricity and empathy. Then, we will conduct a comparative study among the long-distance reflexives in Chinese, Japanese and Korean to provide our explanations of the universals as well as the variations among them by resorting to the different effects of the relevant discourse factors. Finally, we will discuss the more general issue like the relationship between the discourse-based notions including indexicality, de se interpretations, logophoricity and empathy, and try to give them a formal representation in syntax, following Cinque (1999), Speas and Tenny (2003), Giorgi (2010) and others who suggest to put discourse-pertinent information in the left periphery, so that the long-distance reflexives in these three Asian languages can be accounted for in a unified framework.Our investigation on the long-distance reflexives in Asian languages will contribute to the theory of binding in that it reflects the diversity of the anaphoric binding systems in human languages as well as the importance of the discourse factors in regulating the binding conditions. It will further benefit the relevant theoretical research such as the nature of belief, self-knowledge, the empathic point of view and consciousness. The outcomes can help people better communicate with each other, and also explain what the cognitive process and mechanism are like when people learn and use reflexives.