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On 30 April, Sally Wong (Languages, Literature and Communication) defends her dissertation titled "Reflexivization in Mandarin: the role of zi-ji and its components" at the ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ Hall.

Reflexive forms

One of the major issues in linguistics is to determine how general – and possibly language independent – properties of our cognitive system and language specific properties interact. One of the areas on which current research focuses is the expression of reflexivity, sentences where the actor and the undergoer of an action are identified (Mary trusts only herself). Chinese has two reflexives, ziji and ta ziji, like many other languages (Dutch zich/zichzelf, Indonesian diri/dirinya (sendiri), etc.). It is generally assumed that when languages have two reflexive forms, the difference between these two reflexives can be described in terms of ‘simplex’ (ziji) and complex (ta ziji), and that these forms behave differently in their distribution and interpretation.

Ziji as a complex anaphor

Since the beginning of the eighties, the virtual consensus in the field was that ziji is a simplex anaphor and that it fitted the pattern for simplex reflexives. Wong's dissertation shows that zi-ji is in fact morphosyntactically complex, consisting of the prefix zi- (also occurring as an element that reflexivizes a verb (Zhangsan xiang ni biaobai le zi-ji ‘Zhangsan unburdened himself to you.’) and a pronominal stem -ji. This analysis fits with what we know about Old Chinese, but poses a problem for existing theories. Wong shows that this can be resolved, and that the system of Mandarin fits in with a cross-linguistically well-established pattern of anaphoric systems.