Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
1999
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Type
MA
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
World Languages, Literatures and Linguistics
Committee Chair
Michael E. Reider.
Committee Co-Chair
Ahmed Fakhri
Committee Member
Johan Seynnaeve
Abstract
The behavior of various types of anaphors may be classified into two types, local and long-distance anaphors. The English reflexive 'himself' and the Japanese reflexive 'zibun' representatively characterize the two types of anaphors. They contrast in that 'himself' is a local anaphor, whereas 'zibun' is a long-distance anaphor. Japanese has another reflexive pronoun, `zibun-zisin', and it behaves more similarly to himself. The standard binding theory (Chomsky (1981)) regulates the behavior of local anaphors; however, the behavior of long-distance anaphors cannot be explained. One proposal for this matter is to invoke parameterization, which defines a language-specific binding domain for anaphors. Within this analysis, both local and long-distance anaphors are treated under Principle A of the standard binding theory. This thesis will examine the difference in the binding domain between 'zibun' and 'zibun-zisin'. To capture the difference accurately, some peculiar behaviors of 'zibun'/'zibun-zisin' such as backward reflexivization are also investigated with reference to recent linguistic studies.
Recommended Citation
Yamada, Masaru, "A study of the Japanese reflexive pronouns, zibun and zibun-zisin" (1999). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 767.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/767