The Anaphor Features and Antecedent Retrieval of Mandarin Ta

Abstract

The studies of antecedent retrieval of Chinese personal pronouns have been the focus of semantic and syntactic scholars. It has also been a difficult problem for learners. This study works on the actual mastery of native Chinese speakers regarding the pronoun Ta (, he) in the third person singular in terms of anaphor features and antecedent retrieval. Two experiments, Ancient Chinese vs. Modern Standard Chinese and uncommon usage vs. common usage, reveal native speakers antecedent retrieval regarding the pronoun Ta (, he) in the third person singular. Experiment 1 found that native Chinese speakers had an error rate of about 25% when analyzing sentences containing Ta in Old Chinese and about 2% in Modern Standard Chinese. The results of Experiment 2 illustrate that native Chinese speakers made about 14% of the errors in the analysis of the uncommon usage of Ta, while only about 1% of the errors were made in the common usage. Therefore, Chinese learners do not need to know all the usage of Ta in Ancient Chinese and uncommon usage, but they need to learn all the usage in Modern Standard Chinese and common usage to achieve the goal of good understanding.