Empathy and Chinese long distance reflexive ziji—remarks on Giorgi (2006, 2007)

Abstract

With the assumption that long distance anaphors (LDAs) are unsaturated positions, Giorgi (Nat. Lang. Linguist. Theory 24:1009–1047, 2006, Linguist. Inq. 38(2):321–342, 2007) argues that the machinery independently needed for temporal anchoring—i.e., the syntactic representation of the coordinate of the bearer-of-attitude and that of the speaker—can also account for long distance binding. In this paper, we claim that the interpretative similarity between temporal anchoring and anaphoric binding suggested by Giorgi cannot be maintained, especially for Chinese, after pointing out the limitations of Giorgi’s theory concerning Chinese LDA ziji. With the recognition of the fact that Chinese long distance reflexive ziji also has an empathic use based on Kuno and Kaburaki’s (Linguist. Inq. 8(4):625–672, 1977) notion of empathy, we argue that a minimal revision to Giorgi’s theory, namely replacing the speaker’s coordinate with the empathy locus which encodes the information of the speaker’s empathy in the embedded clause, will help account for all the difficulties that Giorgi’s theory faces concerning Chinese LDA ziji.