A Study Of "Zhi" Based On A Corpus Of Modern Chinese From The Angle Of Anaphora

Anaphora, originating from western philosophy and logic, has been studied by schol-ars for a long history. Most studies about anaphora are based on English as the corpus. Scholars have studied modern Chinese from the angle of anaphora since 1980s. However, they mostly focus on modern Chinese, and empty words of classical Chinese which still exist in modern Chinese are rarely mentioned. This paper tries to analyze the usage and function of empty words of classical Chinese which still exist in modern Chinese from the angle of anaphora, by taking Zhi(之)for example.Because there are various anaphora forms about Zhi(之), the third personal pronoun Zhi(之), which is used as the objective of a verb or a preposition to anaphora the nouns or the noun phrases, is chosen to be the object, in order to make the research more pertinent. The accessibility of Zhi(之) is studied based on a database-driven analysis of articles ap-pearing in People's Daily, January of 1998. The result shows that Zhi(之) in the discourse anaphora resolution are middle accessibility markers by analyzing the examples of our corpus and making use of some thoeries. When used as the objective of a verb, Zhi(之) is marked as Zhi1(之₁). When used as the objective of a preposition, Zhi(之) is marked as Zhi2(之₂). Through further research, we find the accessibility of Zhi1(之₁) is higher than Zhi2(之₂). Then, the contrast between Zhi(之) in the discourse anaphora resolution and the common pronouns in modern Chinese is made, and the similarities and differences in usage and function are shown. Towards Zhi(之) in the sentence anaphora resolution, Zhi(之) as the objective of a verb is markes as Zhi3(之₃), and Zhi(之) as the objective of a preposition is markes as Zhi4(之₄). No matter Zhi3(之₃) or Zhi4(之₄), some are middle accessibility markers and the rest are high accessibility markers by analyzing the examples of our corpus. What's more, in this part, the contrast of the accessibility as well as the ex-pressive effect between Zhi(之) in the discourse anaphora resolution and the sentence anaphora resolution is also made, and then the similarities and differences are showed, and the reasons are analyzed. At last, the conclusion is made, and the advantages and disadvan-tages of this paper are post. Furthermore, the suggestion about how to continue the next re-search about this topic is put forward.