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Logophoricity and the processing of Chinese reflexives (Lyu & Kaiser., 2024)

Citation

Lyu, J., & Kaiser, E. (2024). Logophoricity and the processing of Chinese reflexives. Journal of East Asian Linguistics, 33(4), 559-597.

My thoughts

They said that they looked at discourse topicality and logophorici roles, but they acutally looked at is the verb biases of self and other-directed verbs and source vs perceiver verbs. I not convienced that how could the self and other directed verbs be the discourse topicality

Summary

• This study investigates the linguistic properties of two reflexive pronoun in Chinese, ziji and ta-ziji
• how the use the LD/exempt of these reflexives relates to the notion of perspective-taking or logophoricity
• offline forced-choice judgment
• online self-paced reading
• found both reflexives are sensitive to the discourse topical status and the loophoric role (source/perceiver) of their long-distance antecedents
• realted to the discrouse topicality and the lofophiric hierarchy to perspective-taking and posit that perspective taking is a unifyinf factor that drives the exempt use of these two reflexvies
• they also differ siglightly that ta-ziji requires a more prominnent perspective center than ziji does
• during incremental processing, different types of discourse infroamtion can be accessed at different processing stages

Introduction

• logophoricity refers to the property of some pronouns called logophoricity pronouns, which are anchored to individuals whose thoughts, feelings, and general states of consciousnss are reported
  • shown in some West Afarican languages, and some LD reflexives such as Icelandic, Japanese, and Chinese
• Due to this connection, long-distance reflexvies referring to perspective centers are widely called logophoric reflevies or exempt reflexives
• ziji can have an exempt use which means they are sensitive to logophoricity
• complex ta-ziji is often a local anaphor constrained by Principle A

Jyu & Kaiser 2024

• Tested discourse topicality and effects of self-directed (fabioa ‘publish’) and other-directed verb (pigai ‘grade’) and their interaction with the bare and compound reflexives in Mandarin.
• They found that Chinese speakers prefer non-local binding with other-directed verbs and local binding with self-directed verbs. There is a main effect of verb bias, which means the participants are more likely to choose a non-local subject when the embedded verb is other-directed. They also found a source advantage for reflexives, which aligns with previous studies, but the source preference is only present with self-directed verbs.
• But the notion of self-directed and other-directed verbs is not well explained. We expect whether the effect will still be present if we use the well-defined psych verbs, such as SE and ES verbs, and their interaction with the thematic hierarchy

Experiment 1a

• they argue that exempt use of xiji id gradiently sensitive to the logophoric hierarchy, which means the gradience is refelected in the fact that the logophoric hierarchy does not categorically rule in or rule out bidning by the perspective center
  • this aligns with previous findings for exempt reflexives in Dutch, German and English
  • Our finding that sources are preferred over pervceivers shows that the predictions derived from the logophoric hierarchy which Culy 1994 proposed based on logophoric pronouns in pure logophoric languages such as Ewe, will also apply to perspective-sensitive reflexived in mixed logophotic languages such as Chinese.

Experiment 1b

• predictions
• Lyu & Kaiser 2023 found that Chinese speakers aniticipate non-local reading os ziji begining at the earliest moements
• Results
• Chinese speakers strongly favor non-local binding when the biased verb preceding ziji is other-directed and favor local binding when the verb is self-directed.
• this stregnthens the wide-spread view that reflexive resolution is not only dirven by syntactic which is locality favtors but also by semantic factors
• It seems that all types pf disctouse-level infroamtion have an equal impact at early processing stages

Experiment 2a

• main effect of verb bias, non-local bidning is preferred with other -directed vebrs, and local binding is preferred with self-directed verbs
• the meain effect of logophoric role is onlky marginal
• there is no verb bias x logophoric role interaction
• planned comparsions reveal an effect of logophoric tole with self-directed verbs, which the soutrved attract more non-local choices than perceivers, but not with the other-directed verbs
• taziji behaves similiartly to ziji in terms of the verb bias effect and the logophotic role effect
• taziji shouwed a weaker disvoutse topicality effect compared to ziji, with lower proportion of non-;coal choices and slightly weaker soutce effevt within the self-directed verb condition
• replicates precious findings by Lyu and Kaiser 2023, where ziji shows stronger non-local binding preferences than ta-ziji in contexts with topical matrix subjects but not in neutral contexts without topical referents.
• they argue that ziji is more likely to be infelucned by disourse topicality, and there is no evidence that the two relxive proms differ in their sensitivty to the logophotic tole of the perspective center

Experiment 2b

• there is no main effect of verb bias, which means there is evidence of discourse topicality plays an early role in the processing of taziji, becuase when the non local subejct is non-topical, a locality bais should emerge.
• in ther perceiver condition, the verb bias effect is not significant
• at the wrap-up region, only the verb bias x logophotic tole interaction reaches signficiance, which means they find that the verb bias effect (e.g., non-local binding preference) is only significant in the source conditon but not in the perceiver conditions
• The logophroci role effect seems delayed reltvie to the discourse topicality effect, and it provided additional novel evidence that ta-ziji tends to be usec as a non-lcoal exempt reflexive when its antecedent is a topical source

discussion

• the goals of experimetn 2a and 2b are to exaime taziji’s binding preferences in the presence of to[icallity and logopho0ricallybprominent such as source and perceiver antecents
• experiment 2a shows that antecedent choice patterns elicited by ta-ziji resemble those of ziji in experimetn 2a
• stronger predernce for source topical subjects within the seld-directed verb consitions conforming to logoophortic hierarcky
• complex reflexives in other languahe taijizi is constrained by the logophotic hierarcky originally proposed for pure logoophoitc languahes
• taziji is sensntivie to logoophotic hierrcky but does not informe us about the binding preferences, whehther ta-ziji tends to be used as an exempt reflexive referring to perspective centers
• verb bias eddect as a diagnositc tool, such as reading slowdonws elicited by self-directed and toher-directed verbs indicate non-;ocal and local bidnign perferences
• within the perceiver consitions, when the matrix subject is tipically prominennt but not preminnent on the lgoophoric hierarch, chinese speakers do no show a oreference for either local or non-lcoal bidning
• the weaker discourse topicality effect shown by taziji which is absence of verb bias effect relative to ziji in online processing echoes out comparative analysis on chinese peakers
• antecedent choices in experiments 1a and 2s, which they dound weaker preferences for non-local bidning with taziji comapred to ziji
• when tipical matrix subject has the loogohpotic tole of srouce, taizji tends to be used as an exempt reflexives
• different subtypes of discourse level informaiton may be accessed at different time points during relfeixve resolution, just like different classes, such as syntactic and sematnic/discourse of informaiton may be accessed at different time poitns = present chanllagnes for the uniforma multiple constraints account
• taizji can be used a sa logophotic reflexive when the non-local antecedent is a sufficiently prominent perspective center

Humanness emapthy hierarchy

• people tend to take the perspective of a human rather than that of an inanimate enity
• taizji can be used as an exmpet relfeixve if the non-ocal subject is a strgoner perspective center than the local subject