REFERENT INTRODUCING AND TRACKING IN CHINESE NARRATIVES (CHINESE LANGUAGE, ANAPHORA, DISCOURSE ANALYSIS)

The present study investigates how referents are introduced into Chinese narrative discourse and how they are tracked throughout the discourse in terms of various anaphoric devices. Referents on their first mention in discourse may receive one of three lexical encodings in two broad categories: determinate (indefinite or definite), and indeterminate. The encodings are correlated with different assumptions about the identifiability of the referents. Through discourse analysis, it is found that the choice in this respect depends heavily on the saliency of the referents in discourse. After being introduced into the discourse, the referents are subject to one of the three major types of anaphoric encodings, zero anaphora, pronominal anaphora, and nominal anaphora. The study focuses on the discourse-pragmatic features that characterize each of the anaphoric devices. In a typology of referent tracking mechanisms, little has been asserted for the inference system as exemplified by Chinese. As a case study, the present thesis presents findings that lead to a deeper understanding of this system, and suggests further inquiries along the line. Moreover, the findings reported here show how the important domain of the Chinese grammar must be understood and explained from a discourse-pragmatic perspective.