A Contrastive Study of Anaphora in English and Chinese

Abstract

Recently, there has been growing interest in the study on cohesion of texts, particularly in the aspect of anaphoric reference. The problem under discussion is within the scope of similar and different usages of anaphors in English and Chinese. Although much work has been done, more studies need to be conducted to ascertain the convincingness of the theories. This essay will demonstrate language materials in real situation in English text and its Chinese translations to prove, explain and enrich the theories about the distinction of English and Chinese anaphora. The thesis for this essay is the contrastive study of anaphora between English and Chinese texts that is the dissimilarities of anaphora in these two language texts and discuss the reasons that caused these differences. And for arguments, four cases of Han’s Andersen’s fairy tales and their Chinese translations and one example from New Oxford Dictionary are selected for the purpose. For methodology, quality analysis is employed. But in general, it is to compare and to contrast in the light of Halliday’s theory on cohesion. The way adopted is to compare broad wise, which means to list similarities and dissimilarities of things needed to be contrast -- anaphora in English and Chinese texts, and then conducts further analysis on them with the theoretical framework. In aspect of detailed analysis, the author adopts the way of illustration, combining language phenomenon listed above with arguments.