Anaphoric Reference in Spoken and Written Chinese Narrative Discourse
汉语叙述体口语和书面语的指代概要
Matthew B. Christensen

Abstract 摘要
This paper examines some syntactic features, specifically anaphoric reference, of spoken and written Chinese narrative discourse. It is shown that Chafe's (1982) notions of integration and involvement are apparent in both spoken and written Chinese narrative discourse. By means of integration written narratives are more compact and syntactically more complex, particularly with regard to anaphoric reference. The abundant use of the third-person pronoun gives the oral narratives a more conversational flavor. In the oral narratives it was found that the zero anaphora and the third person pronoun were used at nearly the same proportion, whereas the repetition of the noun phrase was used less than 20% of the time. In the written narratives the zero anaphora was the overwhelming choice of anaphoric reference marking with 55% of the markings. The third person pronoun was the least used with less than 20% of the markings. Statistical tests verified the significance of the pronoun marking in the oral over the written narratives. These findings clearly show that anaphoric reference marking between oral and written informal narrative discourse is dramatically different. This leads one to believe that anaphoric reference marking may indeed be an indicator of discourse type. Though some have suggested that the zero anaphora is the normal marking in Chinese discourse, my results indicate that its productivity depends on the specific type of discourse being analyzed. More research is needed in a wider variety of discourse genres to more fully understand anaphoric reference marking.

本文旨在检验汉语叙述体口语和书面语的一些句法特征，尤其是指代词的使用。Chafe (1982) 指出汉语叙述体口语和书面语中租合参与的概念都很明显。通过租合，书面叙述语更加紧凑，句法上更加复杂，特别是在指代方面。大量第三人称代词的使用给口语叙述语增添了多一点的对话的特色。在口语叙述语中，虚指代和第三人称代词使用的频率几乎同等，而名词重复则要少20%，书面叙述语中虚指代是所有指代纪录里最突出的一种，占55%。第三人称代词是用最少，只有20%。统计结果证明代词在口语里的重要性超过书面语。这些发现清楚地表明叙述体口语和非正式书面语里的指代有巨大的差别，这使我们考虑指代的方式是否语体的标志。尽管有人建议虚指代是汉语里正常的指代选择，我的结果表明虚指代的使用频率取决于被分析的具体语体。要更深了节指代方式，更多的研究需要探讨更多样的语言文体。

<< Back 返回

Readers 读者