A Comparative Study In English And Chinese Based On Accessibility Theory

In linguistics, accessibility theory is put forward by Ariel (1990), an Israel linguist. It is a cognitive and psychological concept, which refers to the degree of promptness to recalling a linguistic unit from human memory system. The term Anaphora derives from an ancient Greek word, which refers to a linguistic phenomenon, that is, one linguistic expression (usually a brief one) is used to refer to the meaning of another linguistic expression in the same chapter (usually in the foregoing text, and occasionally in the following text ). Accessibility theory studies anaphora from a cognitive aspect and cognition is a common competence possessed by all human beings. It is widely acknowledged that it is an advanced method to study anaphora from a cognitive standpoint.This thesis gives an introduction of Ariel's accessibility theory and analyzes its characteristics, then gives a comparative study on anaphora in English and Chinese. It is a comparative analysis of noun anaphora, pronoun anaphora and zero anaphora in English and Chinese. This thesis does the research from the pragmatic viewpoint, combining with Accessibility Theory in cognitive grammar and finds the similarities and differences of anaphora in these two languages. The similarities are due to the shared characteristic of language based on human cognition and thoughts, while the differences are results of the dissimilarities between English and Chinese. There is also a distinct difference in English and Chinese accessibility markers. In English, the high accessibility markers are mainly pronouns whereas in Chinese, zero pronouns are usually high accessibility markers. However, in English, pronouns are more frequently used instead of zero anaphors in Chinese. All the differences are because of the different structures of the two languages. English is a subject-prominent language, whereas Chinese is a topic-prominent language.