Forms and Meanings of self: Perspectives from Linguistic Typology

Previous studies generally define Mandarin ziji or self-forms in other languages as "reflexive pronouns" or "reflexive anaphors", and within each theoretical framework, deductive reasoning is carried out.Based on the notion of being "framework-neutral" in linguistic typology, this paper explores the diversity of self-forms across languages.It is found that not only the functions of Mandarin ziji are not uniformly distributed, but are the types of self-forms across languages, all of which attest the very existence of language-particular patterns of forms & meaning matches.One step further, this paper proposes that the set of self-forms and meanings within one language constitutes a self inventory, and by means of the "inventory structure" approach, it reveals the interworkings between the forms and meanings of ziji with a hierarchical structure.Such an approach is expected to avoid difficulties in language description and comparison, which is typically caused by pre-established categories.