This grant supports the continuation of collaborative, cross linguistic research on long distance reflexives. Long distance reflexives are reflexive forms which can take antecedents outside of their local domain (governing category). For instance, in the example below from Mandarin the reflexive can refer to either the subject of the complement clause or of the matrix clause: Zhangsan renwei Mali piping ziji Zhangsan thinks Mary criticized self 'Zhangsan thinks that Mary criticized him/herself.' The focus of this project is on determining empirically the conditions under which a reflexive can be long distance and the properties that correlate with the occurrence of long distance reflexives. A second goal is to develop a theory that will predict when a reflexive will be long distance and will have these properties. The project involves collaboration among three PIs and three cooperating colleagues at universities in Singapore and Malaysia. A major, new focus of research will be on determining which of the conditions on long distance reflexives are grammatical in nature and which derive from principles of discourse such as logophoricity. The PIs will also examine whether the interaction between grammar and discourse is the same in all languages or whether languages exhibit different mixtures of grammatical and discourse conditions.
