Abstract The Principle A of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1986) prescribes that a reflexive should refer to a local antecedent within the local syntactic domain containing the reflexive. However, the Chinese (simple) reflexive ziji (自己, standing for oneself) can refer not only to a local but also to a long-distance antecedent in sentences, leaving room for a long - distance/local anaphoric ambiguity in common Chinese “Antecedent1 + Verb1 + Antecedent2 + Verb2 + ziji” structures, with the eligible reference of ziji being directly determined by discourse context. The present study explores how discourse context affects ziji anaphora processing by presenting such long-distance/local ambiguous ziji anaphoric structures in different (disambiguating) referential contexts or without a context, which found that relative to ziji in the non-contextual (ambiguous) condition, zijis under both the long-distance and the local referential contexts elicited a frontally dominant and sustained negativity that emerges at about 350 ms after word-onset, i.e., an Nref effect. The current Nref effect may reflect the processes that language users make a discourse inference to resolve the (temporarily) referential ambiguity or difficulty caused by ziji having two candidate antecedents in the discourse. Theoretically, based on neurocognitive evidence obtained from the present and previous (e.g., Li & Zhou, 2010) studies on ziji anaphora processing, it was hypothesized that discourse- and sentence-level ziji anaphora may involve distinct neurocognitive processes that are governed by different mechanisms (factors), which to some extent accords with a comprehensive theory considering multiple factors on explaining ziji anaphora.

中文翻译：

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汉语中的“自己”是谁？语篇理解中汉语简单反身字的ERP反应

Abstract The Principle A of the Binding Theory (Chomsky, 1981, 1986) 规定，自反应该指代包含自反的局部句法域内的局部先行词。然而，汉语（简单）反身ziji（自己，代表自己）在句子中不仅可以指局部，也可以指远距离的前因，为普通汉语“Antecedent1”中的远距离/局部照应歧义留有余地。 + Verb1 + Antecedent2 + Verb2 + ziji”的结构，“ziji”的指称直接由语境决定。本研究通过在不同（消除歧义）指称语境或没有语境下呈现这种长距离/局部模糊的自述结构，探讨语篇语境如何影响自述回指加工，研究发现，相对于非语境（歧义）条件下的 ziji，远距离和本地指称语境下的 zijis 都引发了正面主导和持续的消极性，在词开始后约 350 ms 出现，即 Nref影响。当前的 Nref 效应可能反映了语言使用者进行语篇推理以解决由于子集在语篇中有两个候选前因而引起的（暂时的）指称歧义或困难的过程。从理论上讲，基于从当前和以前（例如，Li & Zhou，2010）关于自述回指加工的研究中获得的神经认知证据，假设语篇和句子级自指回指可能涉及由不同机制控制的不同神经认知过程（因素），