Character referencing in English and Chinese storybooks written for children

Abstract

The texts of 12 English and 12 Chinese children's books were analysed for how they referred to the main characters in the stories. Comparisons were made between referring expressions used in six texts for early-level readers and six texts for mid-level readers in both languages. There were no differences found between early- and mid-level texts in their use of full expressions, pronouns or ellipsis within the two languages. However, the Chinese books at both levels contained significantly more elliptical expressions than the English books, and there was a trend for the Chinese books to use fewer pronominal expressions than the English books. Finally, contexts of use for the full expressions indicated that these expressions tended to occur where something in the discourse was changing: moves in and out of the story frame, moves involving a shift in character or time and place of the story, and moves in and out of quoted speech. Full expressions were also used to resolve ambiguity. These differences between Chinese and English books in the use of ellipsis and pronouns are related to the features of the languages (Chinese as a prodrop language). The occurrence of full expressions in contexts of discourse shift is used to refute Halliday and Hasan's (1976) closed text theory of discourse cohesion. Implications for literacy development in bilingual children are also discussed.