Viewed from the functional perspective, the functioning of the reflexive ziji in a Chinese sentence involves four semantic
roles: both sentence
internal and sentence external ones. The former are present in the sentence, while the latter are usually default. These semantic roles include the narrator (or writer), the listener (or reader), the referent of ziji , and the semantic item interrelated to the referent. The dynamic interaction of the semantic roles form the semantic context for the interpretation of ziji in a sentence. As far as the referent of ziji is concerned, under the condition that different persons co occur, the first person is more likely to be chosen as the referent of ziji than the second person, which is more likely to be chosen as ziji 's referent than the third person. This shows there is a narrator on the pragmatic level, and that the space distances between the narrator and the different participants are different. When there is more than one event
participant co occurring in the same sentence, ziji usually observes the Principle of the Shortest Distance Referring, and refers to the participant adjacent to the narrator. However, it can also refer to the next closest participant under two conditions: a) when the interpreted semantic content of the sentence concerning the closest participant does not correspond to the reality; or b) the narrator wants to foreground the event participant that posits further away in the linguistic context. There exists a dynamic interrelation between ziji 's referent and the semantic item related to the referent. This interrelation occurs at the three pragmatic functional levels in language communication. The first level is named Sentence internal Referring and Sentence external Linking, at which ziji 's referent appears in the sentence, yet its linking item is default and implied in the pragmatic context; the second level is Sentence internal Linking and Sentence external Referring, at which the linking item of ziji 's referent occurs in the sentence, while ziji 's referent is default; and the third level is called Sentence internal Linking and Sentence internal Referring, on which ziji 's referent and the linking item related to the referent co occur in the sentence. At the level of Sentence internal Linking and Sentence internal Referring, when there is more than one event participant that are all in the third person, and each participant can act as the referent of ziji , semantic ambiguity will arise, because different ways of semantic interpretation are possible and acceptable. In this case, to identify, among the semantic roles, which is ziji 's referent and which is the linking item of the referent, one must rely on the more macro linguistic or pragmatic contexts.