Point of View and Zibun: Toward a Unified Theory of the Japanese Reflexive

Point of View and Zibun: Toward a Unified Theory of the Japanese Reflexive

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The predominant view of the binding facts of the Japanese reflexive zibun is that there are two types of uses; one is as a reflexive which is to be bound by the clause-mate subject, and the other one is as the so-called "logophoric" pronoun.Accordingly, the binding theory of zibun along the product lines of this view will take the form of disjunction: zibun is bound by an NP if the NP is the clause-mate subject or it is a logophoric NP.However, it is hard to accept the idea of a morpheme one use of which is governed by a purely syntactic property, subjecthood, and the other one of which is governed by a purely semantic/pragmatic property, logophoricity.

Such an analysis seems to fail to reach the appropriate level of generalization about the binding facts of zibun.In the current paper, we propose a conceptually more untied view that every instance of zibun should be hound by a point of view, and demonstrate that knowall.blog such a view is superior to the above disjunctive view empirically as well as conceptually.*.