A Comparative Study Of Third Person Reference In English And Chinese

This thesis focuses on third person reference, one important cohesive device in the cohesion theory proposed by Halliday. It describes the application of this device in the English and Chinese languages, compares the main differences and explores the possible causes. The major findings are as follows: 1. Third person reference is more frequently applied in English than in Chinese. 2. In anaphoric reference, omission of third person pronouns is much more common in Chinese in three situations: the omission of possessive pronouns, the omission of accusative pronouns and that of nominative pronouns. 3. English is a language prominent in substitutive devices, among which third person pronouns, but Chinese sometimes prefers the direct repetition of animate nouns. 4. Cataphora is quite acceptable in English but rarely applied in Chinese, in written language at least. These differences are justified by two reasons. Firstly, English is a hypotaxis-prominent language with stress on the integrity of overt structure and the precision of grammatical rules; Chinese is a parataxis-prominent language, which attaches much more significance to semantic connection than structural formality. These characteristic discrepancies contribute to the first three differences above. Secondly, the cognitive patterns of the two peoples differ in way of word order. In English, the core term is usually placed at the front, the adjunct terms at the rear, but in Chinese, the core term is put at the back, the adjunct terms at the front. This directly causes the existence of the fourth difference.The analysis of these differences can prevent the mother tongue interference, thus improve the quality of English teaching. Moreover, it is of much value for text transformation. However, despite the author's efforts, the inadequacy can not be ignored. As the sample texts come from literary works only, the conclusions are far from being comprehensive. On the other hand, the empirical researches are not done on a large scale, so the thesis is still in a speculative stage. Its validity remains to be confirmed, and the conclusions remain subjective in a degree. Considering the extensive use of third person pronouns and the practical value of personal reference, the author calls for more studies on this phenomenon. The space should be expanded and the results employed so as to promote the development of the cohesion theory.The thesis consists of four chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One talks of the background and the significance of the study. Chapter Two reviews the history of text linguistics and the cohesion theory, expounds the concept of cohesion and clarifies the relationship between cohesion and coherence. Chapter Three explores the concept and classification of reference and illustrates its four types: endophora, exophora, anophora and cataphora. Then, after presenting the personal systems in English and Chinese, it proceeds to introduce third person pronouns as a cohesive device. Chapter Four focuses on a contrastive analysis. Based upon the statistics data from some English and Chinese literary texts, the author describes the application of third person reference, compares the different forms it takes in the texts and analyzes the reasons that contribute to those differences. In the conclusion part, the major findings are summarized, the limitations of the study are pointed out, and the suggestions for further researches are proposed.