Comparative analysis among Chinese, Korean and English in Binding Principles

Abstract

In the late 1980s, Chomsky proposed the “Government and Binding theory” based on the original theory of transformational generative grammar. Binding theory, as a subtheory of GB, is a theoretical generalization of the referential dissimilarity between noun phrases in the same utterance and the related conditional restrictions. The properties and morphology of reflexive pronouns in various languages have been a hot topic of debate in linguistics since Chomsky proposed the Binding theory. The first principle of Binding theory points out that the anaphor is bound within its binding domain, and reflexive pronouns belong to the category of anaphor language, so Binding theory can be closely related to the study of the properties of reflexive pronouns, i.e. morphology. The second principle pronouns are free within their binding domain, and the third principle Rexpression (referential expression) must be free in any domain. Based on this theory, Chomsky and his successors have done a lot of research on reflexive pronouns in different languages. Among them, the study of Korean and Chinese reflexive pronouns has also received a lot of attention from linguists. In view of the previous analysis, this paper takes the Chinese pronouns ziji, ta-ziji, Korean pronouns caki, casin, kunyecasin kucasin and English himself, herself as the objects of study. The concepts of C-command, governing category, Local domain, Longdistance binding and phi-feature specification and anaphoric dependency of reflexive pronouns are used for comparative analysis under the framework of Binding theory. Overall, this study provides new insights into the syntax of Chinese, Korean, and English reflexive pronouns, and is important for understanding the development of reflexive pronouns from a linguistic perspective. It also provides pedagogical insights for English scholar-users. Key words Reflexive pronouns, binding theory, referentiality, anaphor