Sentential Cataphora In English And Chinese Narrative Discourse: A Cognitive-Functional Account

This study focuses on sentential cataphora in narrative discourse. Cataphora differs from the unmarked form of anaphora in that the pro-form appears before (earlier than/ to the left of) the co-referring expression. We extend this definition on the basis of the hierarchic relation between (?), P, and NP on the accessibility marking scale to cover the following three patterns:"(?)+P","(?)+NP", and"P+NP". This treatment of cataphora differs from previous studies in that in the past only the"P+NP"pattern was addressed.The"(?)+P"and"(?)+NP"patterns (conflated as"(?)+P/NP") are identified on the basis of a functional/cognitive analysis of the -ing headed"P+NP"pattern in English. Specifically, argument for shift of attention from"P+NP"to"(?)+P/NP"is based on the following observations and assumptions: a)"P+NP", with an explicit subordinator in the P clause, has been sufficiently accounted for in many syntactic/structural analyses; b) van Hoek (1997)'s so-called'cognitive/semantic'interpretation is essentially a syntactic one, and her analysis of the (?)-headed ('(?) V-ing') clause in cataphora is largely static because linear order is employed to analyze"connectivity between nominals"only; c) in establishing"(?)+NP"as an alternative and replacement for the"P+NP"pattern, we combine'action continuity'(temporal sequence) and'topic continuity'(referential sequence) in the reinterpretation of the V-ing headed"P+NP"pattern; d) it helps to establish a common ground, or TC, for the contrastive analysis of the two languages concerned.V-ing headed clause in English shares with (?)-headed clause in Chinese in that both are used for expressing a perfective iconic event, and as such both can be construed as providing the background for the event(s)/clause(s) that will follow. This assumption differs from the traditional understanding of grounding as represented in Li (2004), whose functional interpretation for the (?)-headed clause is based on a somewhat simplistic form-function mapping in the two languages, as is illustrated below.Chinese: perfectiv(e了)= foreground vs imperfective/durativ(e着)= background English: reduced forms (V-ing)= background vs full forms(-ed)= foregroundBy taking a cognitive-functional perspective and employing the theoretical notions of accessibility, iconicity, and markedness in this study, we analyze all the sentences containing cataphora in our Chinese-English bilingual parallel corpus in terms of both formal'NP+VP'and cognitive-functional'topic + comment/action'configurations, and interpret the cataphoric sentences basically in terms of the semantics of time as reflected in both topic continuity (referential sequence) and action continuity (temporal sequence). This cognitive-functional approach to the interpretation of sentential anaphora in narrative discourse leads us to arrive at a more feasible account of grounding, since the initial clause in a sentence containing cataphora is oriented by the unidirectionality of time, thus revealing a direct mapping between language and the conceptual world.Our data analyses show that the ADV/subordination account of the sentence-initial V-ing clause is untenable, and the form-function mapping between imperfectivity/着and backgrounding is far from perfect. The study also examines the dynamic interaction between topic, aspect, and the use of conjunction within a cataphoric sentence in Chinese and English narrative discourse.Up-playing inter-lingual similarity, the overall tendency shared is summarized as"to be iconic is to be economical". Difference between the languages lies in the form-function mapping: it is more direct in Chinese and more indirect in English, correlated with and reflected in the more rigid order in Chinese and more flexible syntax (morphology) in English.The conclusions are based on a self-collected bilingual parallel corpus: for SL Chinese, we employ Camel and Midnight, part of the former was employed by Li (2004); SL English data consists solely of narrative genre, as such is more consistent than van Hoek (1997).