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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Universals of reflexives

Abstract

dc:description

The locality conditions on reflexives vary widely from language to language. In English, a reflexive (e.g. himself) must take a local antecedent. In contrast, in Asian languages like Chinese, a reflexive (e.g. ziji) can take an antecedent indefinitely far from its antecedent. Furthermore, in European languages, a reflexive is bound in a less restricted domain than in English, but not in an indefinite domain as in Chinese. The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a unitary analysis of locality conditions on the binding of reflexives among languages within the general framework of Government and Binding theory. The core idea explored here is that reflexives in all languages obey the same locality conditions and that apparent long distance reflexives involve local successive cyclic head movement.

Degree

thesis:*
Name thesis:degree_name
Ph.D.
Level thesis:degree_level
Dissertation
Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
Language, Linguistics
Grantor
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Year dc:date
2011

Author and committee

dc:creator, dc:contributor.*
Author dc:creator
  • Sung, Li-May
Contributors dc:contributor
  • Cole, Peter

Subjects

dc:subject × 1

Rights

dc:rights
Statement dc:rights
  • Copyright 1990 Sung, Li-May
Language dc:language
eng

Identifiers

dc:identifier.*
Identifier
AAI9114431
(UMI)AAI9114431
OAI identifier oai:identifier
oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23453

Chain of custody

source
Harvested from
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
Base URL
www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh
Last updated
2026-07-22
Source record
OAI-PMH GetRecord
citation

Sung, Li-May. Universals of reflexives. Dissertation thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23453