On Europeanization Of Chinese Third Person Reference

The development and improvement of Chinese have undergone a very long period, from Wenyan (classical language) to baihua (vernacular language) until today's Modern Chinese. Besides the development of Chinese itself, Western languages, especially English also play an important role in this process.The recent one hundred years since May Fourth Movement is a critical period for the development and improvement of Modern Chinese. With translation in a large scale of Western literary works during the past century, Chinese now bears obvious marks of Western languages, mainly English. A large number of Europeanized constructions and expressions have come into Chinese with the aid of translation, hence forming a typical phenomenon in Modern Chinese—Europeanized Grammar, one of the most severe facets being the third person reference.Through a contrastive analysis of third person references between Chinese before and after May Fourth Movement and English, the thesis tries to reveal their Europeanized uses and find out the reasons. The thesis is an empirical quantitative contrastive study of the Europeanization of third person references which is demonstrated by their changes and frequencies, based on data collected from novels A Dream of Red Mansions, The Family and their English versions.The Europeanization of Chinese third person references has advantages as well as disadvantages. They can make the referential relations more clear and evident so as to avoid misunderstanding and ambiguity. But once over-used or misused, they will spoil the conciseness of Chinese and even can not form co-referential relations with their precedents. This research will help us take the best use of these advantages to enrich Chinese and avoid over-Europeanization.