Abstract
In this paper, I examine the Literary Chinese reflexive zì, which exhibits a crosslinguistically uncommon pattern: it performs both anaphoric and emphatic uses in adverbial position. I show that it has several uses: signalling coreference between the subject and the object, the object’s possessor or the topic or focus of a complement clause, emphasising that the subject’s identity, and indicating that the event affected the subject itself or had no external cause. I argue against categorically dividing these uses into anaphoric and emphatic uses. I propose four properties to unify the various uses: the referent of zì is centrally relevant to the event denoted by the predicate, coreferential with the subject, unexpected in its role in the event, and often contrasts with an alternative referent that may play same role. I compare my account to properties of reflexives in other languages, and argue that zì only partially supports Levinson’s (Levinson, Stephen C. 1991. Pragmatic reduction of the binding conditions revisited. Journal of Linguistics 27(1). 107–161) theory of the development of anaphoric reflexives from emphatics.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Zoe Fang for help with the annotations. This paper was first written as part of my Master’s thesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I would like to thank my committee, Stefan Th Gries, John W DuBois, Mira Ariel and Marianne Mithun, for their helpful comments throughout the process.
Supplementary Materials
Data, code and additional examples can be found in the supplementary materials deposited at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8301191.
Appendix: List of glosses
- ACC
-
accusative
- ASSOC
-
associative
- CONJ
-
conjunction
- COP
-
copula
- DEM
-
demonstrative
- FUT
-
future
- GEN
-
genitive
- HON
-
honorific
- INST
-
instrumental
- IRR
-
irrealis
- JI
-
reflexive jǐ
- LOC
-
locative
- NEG
-
negation
- NMZ
-
nominaliser
- PRF
-
perfect
- PURP
-
purposive
- QUOT
-
quotative
- REC
-
reciprocal
- SFP
-
sentence-final particle
- ZI
-
reflexive zì
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© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The scope of the problems with the problem of scope
- Information structure of converb constructions: Estonian -des, -mata and -maks constructions
- Beyond anaphoric and emphatic: diversity and unity in the functions of literary Chinese reflexive zì
- Inference versus assumption in light of the Finnish evidential-modal adverbs näköjään and varmaan
- The interaction of standard negation in clauses of substitution: a typological account
- Lexical systems with systematic gaps: verbs of falling
- Book Reviews
- Jieun Kiaer: Emoji speak: Communication and behaviours on social media
- Devyani Sharma: From deficit to dialect: The evolution of English in India and Singapore
- Marian Klamer and Francesca Moro: Traces of contact in the lexicon: Austronesian and Papuan studies
- Elisa Mattiello: Transitional morphology: Combining forms in modern English
- Katerina Stathi: Granularity in the verbalization of events and objects
- Andreas Trotzke: Non-canonical questions
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- The scope of the problems with the problem of scope
- Information structure of converb constructions: Estonian -des, -mata and -maks constructions
- Beyond anaphoric and emphatic: diversity and unity in the functions of literary Chinese reflexive zì
- Inference versus assumption in light of the Finnish evidential-modal adverbs näköjään and varmaan
- The interaction of standard negation in clauses of substitution: a typological account
- Lexical systems with systematic gaps: verbs of falling
- Book Reviews
- Jieun Kiaer: Emoji speak: Communication and behaviours on social media
- Devyani Sharma: From deficit to dialect: The evolution of English in India and Singapore
- Marian Klamer and Francesca Moro: Traces of contact in the lexicon: Austronesian and Papuan studies
- Elisa Mattiello: Transitional morphology: Combining forms in modern English
- Katerina Stathi: Granularity in the verbalization of events and objects
- Andreas Trotzke: Non-canonical questions