Communications in Humanities Research ISSN: 2753-7072
Home> Volumes> Volume CHR Vol.16> Article
Research Article

The Anaphor Features and Antecedent Retrieval of Mandarin “Ta”

Pu MengGeorge Mason University*

* Corresponding author: [email protected]

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” (他, 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” (他, 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.

Keywords: third person singular pronoun; antecedent retrieval; error rates
Published: November 28, 2023
DOI: 10.54254/2753-7064/16/20230645
Volume: CHR Vol.16
pp. 182-191
Download PDF

References

  1. Gao, L., Liu, Z., and Huang, Y. (2005). Who is Ziji? An experimental research on Binding Principle. Linguist. Sci. 2, 39–50.
  2. Liu, Z. (2009). The cognitive process of Chinese reflexive processing. J. Chinese Linguist. 37, 1–27.
  3. Li, X., and Zhou, X. (2010). Who is Ziji? ERP responses to the Chinese reflexive pronouns during sentence comprehension. Brain Res. 1331, 96–104.
  4. Dillon, B., Chow, W. Y., Wagers, M., Guo, T., Liu, F., and Phillips, C. (2014). The structure-sensitivity of memory access: evidence from Mandarin Chinese. Front. Psychol. 5:1025.
  5. Chen, Z., Jäger, L., and Vasishth, S. (2012). How structure-sensitive is the parser? Evidence from Mandarin Chinese. Emp. Approaches Linguist. Theory111:43.
  6. Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.
  7. Heim, I. (1982). The Semantics of Definite and Indefinite Noun Phrases. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
  8. Elbourne, P. D. (2008). The interpretation of pronouns. Lang. Linguist. Compass 2, 119–150.
  9. Kintsch, W. (1975). Memory Representations of Text. Information Processing and Cognition. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
  10. Gernsbacher, M. A. (1989). Mechanisms that improve referential access. Cognition 32, 99–156.
  11. Greene, S. B., McKoon, G., and Ratcliff, R. (1992). Pronoun resolution and discourse models. J. Exp. Psychol. Learn. Mem. Cogn. 18:266.
  12. Myers, J. L., and O’Brien, E. J. (1998). Accessing the discourse representation during reading. Discourse Process. 26, 131–157.
  13. Foraker, S., and McElree, B. (2011). Comprehension of linguistic dependencies: speed−accuracy tradeoff evidence for direct−access retrieval from memory. Lang. Linguist. Compass 5, 764–783.
  14. Kush, D. (2013). Respecting Relations: Memory Access and Antecedent Retrieval in Incremental Sentence Processing. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland, College Park.
  15. Sturt, P. (2013). “Constraints on referential processing,” in Sentence Processing, ed R. van Gompel (London: Routledge), 136–159.
  16. Hickmann, Maya, and Henriëtte Hendriks. (1999). "Cohesion and anaphora in children's narratives: A comparison of English, French, German, and Mandarin Chinese." Journal of Child Language 26.2: 419-452.
  17. Ning, Pang, and Shi Jun-feng. (2010). "The third personal pronoun anaphora resolution in the paroxysmal text of the Chinese web." 2010 International Conference on Computer Application and System Modeling (ICCASM 2010).
  18. Fei, Li, et al. (2008). "Chinese pronominal anaphora resolution based on conditional random fields." 2008 International Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering. Vol. 1. IEEE.
  19. Helmbrecht, Johannes. (2015). A typology of non-prototypical uses of personal pronouns: synchrony and diachrony. Journal of Pragmatics. 88, 176-189.
  20. Yuyanxue Luncong. (1980) 語言學論叢 Essays on Linguistics. 22:186–225. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
  21. Li Charles, Thompson Sandra (1979), "Third-Person Pronouns and Zero-Anaphora in Chinese Discourse", in Givon Talmy ed., Syntax and Semantics 12. New York: Academic Press.
  22. Chao, Yuenren. (1968). A Grammar of Spoken Chinese. University of California Press.
  23. Lü Shuxiang et al. (1980). Xiandai Hanyu Babai Ci [800 Words in Chinese]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
  24. Zhu, Dexi. (1982). Yufa Jiangyi [Lectures on Grammar]. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
  25. Ma, Qingzhu. (1983). Xiandai Hanyu de shuangbinyu gouzao [Constructions with double objects in modern Chinese]. Yuyanxue Luncong 10: 166- 196. Beijing: The Commercial Press.
  26. Iljic, Robert. (1987). Empty ta in Mandarin Chinese. Computational Analyses of Asian and African languages 26: 15-34.
  27. Lin, Jo-wang. (1994). Object non-referentials, definiteness effect, and scope interpretation. Proceedings of North Eastern Linguistics Society 24, ed. by Merce Gonzalez, 287-30 1. Amherst: University of Massachusetts.
  28. Yuan, Yulin. (2003). Wuzhi daici “ta” de jufa yuyi gongneng [The syntactic and semantic functions of the non-referential pronoun ta]. Yufa Yanjiu he Tansuo 12:44-64. Beijing: Peking University Press.
  29. Xu Liejiong. (1999). A Special use to the third singular pronoun. In: Cahiers de linguistique - Asie Orientale, vol. 28(1), 3-22.