Discourse effects in processing Chinese reflexive pronouns

Abstract Reflexive pronoun resolution in Chinese is well known to be affected by discourse context, as antecedent choice can be guided to a long-distance or local antecedent. How discourse affects the real-time processing of reflexive resolution, however, is not well understood, especially over different reflexive types. This research investigates two reflexives, 自己 zìjǐ ‘self’ and 他自己 tāzìjǐ ‘him/herself’, to understand if discourse influences their processing differently, as only tāzìjǐ has a preference for a local antecedent. Recent research has shown that there appears to be competition between discourse bias towards long-distance binding and preference for locality. Utilizing a self-paced reading experiment, we test if context biased towards a long-distance antecedent affects the processing of the reflexives as compared to without context. We find that context affects both reflexives immediately, contrary to what has been found in the literature. Our findings suggest that there is no competition, with discourse context guiding antecedence effortlessly. Moreover, our approach is couched within neo-Gricean pragmatic theory, simplifying our understanding of reflexive processing in Chinese without necessitating a conflict between syntax and pragmatics.