An Analysis Of Zero Anaphora In Chinese Prose From Activation-Spreading Model

This dissertation examines what makes the resolution of zero anaphora so recognizable and retrievable in some loosely constructed discourse like Chinese prose. The nature of this investigation is to find some innate causes of zero anaphora in Chinese prose through the analysis of anaphoric distribution. Hence the objective of this dissertation is to investigate the anaphoric effect in Chinese discourse in terms of some cognitive principles. So far, zero anaphora has been largely studied and analyzed in general linguistics of Chinese, but not that much systematically applied to the study of Chinese prose. As for the current study of zero anaphora, generally speaking, there are three perspectives: semantic perspective, syntactic perspective, and contextual perspective. However, no widely accepted conclusion has been attained to the resolution of zero anaphora, and nor has any significant breakthrough been made on the basis of traditional pattern of investigation. In this study, the author will mainly focus on the distribution of zero anaphora in Chinese prose by making an empirical study and presenting concrete statistics, so as to find how to interpret the omitted information and how to approach the continuity of meaning. As we know, anaphora has been classified into three groups on the basis of the different forms: nominal anaphora, pronominal anaphora, and zero anaphora. In this study, we will mainly look into zero anaphora in five Chinese prose, which contains about 10,000 words and a total number of 231 zero anaphora among the discourses. The basic assumption in this dissertation is that, as for a common and literate native language user, the interpretation of zero anaphora in discourse is a cohesive and natural procedure. Through this way, we can find out how readers interpret zero anaphora between the lines when they encounter zero anaphora in articles. The method applied in this dissertation is proved to be a good way of finding out how readers interpret zero anaphora through cognitive activities, especially the retrieval of anaphoric information from articles. Therefore the recall effect of zero anaphora in sentences is a right way to reveal the resolution of zero anaphora when proper information has been activated. This dissertation consists of five parts. Chapter one serves as an introduction, including the research background and the research orientation. Chapter two is a literature review of zero anaphora analysis, consisting of cognitive approaches and linguistic approaches. Chapter three is a case study of the chosen data, including the source of data, the statistical method and the major findings. It indicates that the most influential factor is the semantic information about zero anaphora, then the syntax, context and in the syntactic ground, some verbs with special contents will also play a role in the anaphoric resolution. Chapter four mainly focuses on the discussion of research finding, which reveal the thoughtful results in this dissertation. Chapter five is the conclusion and the limitations of the study in this dissertation, which may provide some hints for latter researchers. To sum up, the goal of this paper is to offer a multiplex approach towards the study of zero anaphora through the analysis of factors that restrain people while they are reading Chinese prose. This study will consider both semantic and syntactic as well as context perspective, which play an important role in anaphoric interpretation. The finding tells us that, in the anaphoric resolution, there is far more than one rule that is working in human's cognitive system. Anaphoric resolution comes from the efforts of multifarious clues between the lines.