Who is “oneself” in Chinese? ERP responses to the Chinese simple reflexive ziji in discourse comprehension

Abstract

The Principle A of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1986) prescribes that a reflexive should refer to a local antecedent within the local syntactic domain containing the reflexive. However, the Chinese (simple) reflexive ziji (自己, standing for oneself) can refer not only to a local but also to a long-distance antecedent in sentences, leaving room for a long - distance/local anaphoric ambiguity in common Chinese “Antecedent 1 + Verb 1 + Antecedent 2 + Verb 2 + ziji ” structures, with the eligible reference of ziji being directly determined by discourse context. The present study explores how discourse context affects ziji anaphora processing by presenting such long-distance/local ambiguous ziji anaphoric structures in different (disambiguating) referential contexts or without a context, which found that relative to ziji in the non-contextual (ambiguous) condition, ziji s under both the long-distance and the local referential contexts elicited a frontally dominant and sustained negativity that emerges at about 350 ms after word-onset, i.e., an Nref effect. The current Nref effect may reflect the processes that language users make a discourse inference to resolve the (temporarily) referential ambiguity or difficulty caused by ziji having two candidate antecedents in the discourse. Theoretically, based on neurocognitive evidence obtained from the present and previous (e.g., Li & Zhou, 2010) studies on ziji anaphora processing, it was hypothesized that discourse- and sentence-level ziji anaphora may involve distinct neurocognitive processes that are governed by different mechanisms (factors), which to some extent accords with a comprehensive theory considering multiple factors on explaining ziji anaphora. • ERP study on Chinese ziji anaphora in discourse comprehension. • Presenting ambiguous ziji anaphoric structures in different referential contexts. • Under both long-distance and local referential contexts, ziji elicited an Nref. • The present Nref reflects processes of discourse referential inference. • Neurocognitive evidence supports a comprehensive theory on ziji anaphora.