The Processing of Chinese Reflexives as Plain Anaphors and Intensifiers.

This study investigates the processing of two Chinese reflexives, ziji ('self') and ta-ziji ('s/he-self'), in structural contexts that support plain anaphor and intensifier interpretations, respectively. Two self-paced reading experiments were conducted to examine the interpretive patterns. Converging evidence from post-reading acceptability judgments and reading times showed that, in contexts supporting plain anaphor readings, both reflexives exhibited locality biases. However, in structural contexts that enforce intensifier readings, the processing patterns changed. These findings highlight the different processing profiles of the two reflexives and provide new insights into how discourse and syntactic constraints interact during online reflexive resolution.