Cognitive Analyses Of Anaphora In English And Chinese Discourse

By co-reference, an addresser refers back or forward with the same or different expressions to someone or something that can be a word, a fact, a sentence or whatever has been mentioned somewhere else in a discourse. As an old and novel question for discussion, the study on anaphora can be traced long back to Greek where it meant, "carrying back". In fact, it is one of the most common phenomena of human language. It originates as a parade of linguistic symbols in place of the entities in the real world, i.e. the signifier and signified as they are called. Co-reference can be classified into endophora and exophora. And the former can be subdivided into anaphora (or forward anaphora) and cataphora (or backward anaphora). This paper will focus on anaphoric phenomena.Traditional syntactic study puts emphasis on reciprocal and reflexive pronouns within sentences. Anaphoric function has been described only as a substitute of an antecedent. Along with the development of linguistics, especially with the appearance of functional grammar and discourse linguistics, more people have been aware of the importance of anaphora. Halliday(1976) even regards the ellipses of nouns beyond the boundary of sentences as anaphoric. Before long, a lot of Chinese researchers start to turn to relative studies, such as Liao(1986) and his study on Chinese anaphora, Chen(1987) and the study about Zero anaphora. Till then, the study has transmitted from sentential to discourse anaphora.Taking discourse anaphora as the objects for study, this paper proceeds with retrospect on some influential theories in syntax, functionalism, pragmatics and cognitive linguistics. On this basis, a framework has been constructed with the modern cognitive theories of Accessibility, CRP Model and Linguistic Iconicity Principles. For the sake of access to anaphoric phenomena, 10 narrative articles are collected as the database for the following analyses on anaphora in English and Chinese. On the ground of the quantitatively statistical analyses, many similarities as well as disparities have been located with cognitive interpretations. Such as, in bothlanguages, high accessible anaphora is more frequently employed since they are activated in CDS. hi addition, the option of anaphoric devices depends largely on the category of its referent, i.e. more than less will high anaphoric markers appear in a CDS where the referent is animate rather than the inanimate.Further analyses demonstrate that the two languages are distinct obviously in the form of anaphoric devices and their frequencies in discourse. Detailed quantities analyses and comparisons are undertaken between them in the following 4 aspects as zero anaphora, definite article, demonstrative pronouns and personal pronouns. Thus the differences are reasonably accessed in the employment of discourse anaphora.Finally, as pointed out by this paper, the applicable purpose of the study lies in many fields, such as foreign language learning and computer translation etc.However, the study on anaphora depends on the promotion of relevant researches. Cognitive study is one of the most important. Anyhow, none of the researches can solve comprehensively anaphoric problems alone. So is Cognitive Linguistics. It is not advisable to put undue emphasis on cognitive competence in understanding discourses. Therefore, it is fair for us to discuss anaphoric from both angles of linguistics and cognition.