On The References In The Translations Of Hong Lou Meng

Cohesion and coherence have been of great concern in the linguistic circle since cohesion theory was first put forward by Halliday and Hasan in 1976. Scholars at home and abroad have made the multi-level researches about this theory and many researchers have found that cohesion is closely related to coherence, and cohesion is an indispensable condition in the construction of text. In recent years, it is not difficult to find papers and books concerning cohesion. However, it is noteworthy that most of them in China focus on cohesive devices in ordinary texts rather than literary classics and seldom approach certain cohesive devices in a deep and detailed way.Based on Halliday & Hasan's theory of cohesion, this thesis uses the original Chinese text and the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng as textual materials to make a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the English and Chinese reference systems (three general kinds of reference, namely: personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference).This thesis shows that in terms of the frequency of the use of words, English personal reference is more frequently used than that of Chinese, while in the same case, repetition of nouns is preferred in Chinese. As for demonstrative references, the Chinese text employs much more zhe and na as well as their derivations. There is no obvious distinction between English comparative references and Chinese ones.