A Syntactic Approach To The Dual Status Of (Bare) Ziji In Binding

The past two decades has witnessed myriad tentative proposals of bindingphenomenon of ziji. However, there is still lack of a full-fledged one which canaccount for the overall range of its binding behaviors. This dissertation mainlyattributes the gloomy fact to the misconception of ziji as a pure anaphor. Thus, basedon canonical Binding Theory, the thesis endeavors to provide a new understanding ofziji—ziji owns dual status of both anaphor and pronominal, expose the interaction ofthose two roles and further offer an account for the blocking effect of ziji.First, the thesis proves ziji’s dual status in binding—locally bound ziji as ananaphor and non-locally bound ziji as a pronoun. Given the common ground mostresearchers have reached on the anaphoric status of ziji, the thesis mainly focuses onthe verification of its pronominality, for which both synchronic and diachronic studiesare conducted. The former one, appealing to the analysis of the sentences with zijirespectively in the position of subject and object, argues that ziji’s ability to occur inthe subject of a finite clause together with its generic reading, long-distance bindingand sub-command effect proves that ziji owns pronominality. Then armed with thecommon knowledge that ziji stems from the fusion of zi and ji in ancient Chinese, thelatter one, i.e., an in-depth probe into the nature of ji and the fusion of zi and ji inArchaic Chinese, shows that ji is on a par to a pronominal and ziji owns a low degreeof fusion, which results in the constituents zi and ji separately manifesting their ownproperties. In this way the pronominal nature of ji in Archaic Chinese indirectlyattests the pronominality of ziji.After that, the paper gives a detailed exposition of the two roles. It maintains thatthe two roles, determined by syntactic structures, can not only manifest solely one ofthem, but also jointly materialize in a sentence. In other words, in a sentence ziji can be used as either an anaphor/a pronoun or both of them. First, the former condition iselaborated by some good cases in point, through which the sufficient and necessaryconditions for ziji purely as an anaphor or a pronominal are discussed as well. Second,a lengthy discussion is conducted on the latter condition. Appealing to BindingPrinciples, the thesis argues that the cases where ziji is bound both locally andnon-locally in one sentence are ascribed to its capacity for embodying two roles inone form, with anaphoricity contributing to local binding and pronominalityengendering long-distance binding. Third, a tentative hypothesis is advanced toaccount for the seeming inevitability of ziji’s binding. The thesis attributes it to ziji’slack of inherent φ-features, which will be usually inherited from other c-commandingDPs and after the inheritance, binding ensues.Last but not least, given that the explanatory power for blocking effect of ziji isaccounted a major criterion to evaluate whether an account of ziji works well, theposterior part, based on the foregoing discussions, further provides an account forblocking effect. It submits that in a sentence with more than one clause if a) theverb/VP in the local domain allows reflexive ziji to follow and there is a possible localbinder, or if b) a sub-command effect emerges in the local domain, blocking effectwon’t emerge unless a blocker in a blocking domain is co-indexed with ziji, throughwhich ziji’s pronominality is absorbed by the blocker. Amid that, a blocking domainmeans a minimal domain containing ziji and an obligatory binder (typically referringto pronouns of first/second person); a blocker denotes a c-commanding/sub-commanding DP in the blocking domain. In brief, an obligatory binder is the realfactor triggering blocking effect in that it has so strong ability to bind pronominal zijithat once it emerges, ziji’s pronominality will be absorbed by it or by another DPwhich contains it or is under the same VP+as it. And the reason for its strong bindingability is the inevitability of co-reference between a pronoun of first/second personand a pronominal ziji sharing identical φ-features.