"the Scholars" Sentence First Zero-shaped Care Research

Zero anaphora on the topic is common in Chinese, which is one of the main characteristics of Chinese. But its appearance varies in different times. Taking The Scholars as the language material, this paper analizes the 8564 syntagmas (mainly the 1698 syntagmas, each of which contains 4 or more clauses) and concludes the characteristics of initial Modern Chinese: first, antecedents appear mainly on the topics. Second, anaphora are much more common than cataphora. Third, pronouns and nouns are infrequently as anaphoric expression. Forth, there are many syntagmas which contain more than one topics. Contrasted the zero anaphora on the topic of The Scholars and that of Camel Xiangzi, this paper educes the differences between initial Modern Chinese and mature Modern Chinese: first, zero anaphora on the topic in initial Modem Chinese is more flexible and common than that in mature Modern Chinese. Second, there is usually only one noun anaphora or pronoun anaphora of one topic in a syntagma, while more zero anaphoras. Third, the topics of initial Modern Chinese change more flexibly, and are more independent from the change of syntagmas. The reasons of these changes conclude linguistic reasons and social reasons.