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Part of
Cognitive Linguistics and the Study of Chinese
Edited by Dingfang Shu, Hui Zhang and Lifei Zhang
[Human Cognitive Processing 67] 2019
► pp. 185–206

Chapter 6
Structural salience and referential accessibility

A cognitive account of inter-clausal NP anaphora in Chinese complex sentences

| Shanghai International Studies University

In Chinese, the subject NP of a preposed subordinate clause can be placed either before or after the subordinate conjunction. This chapter argues that this positional difference of the NP is closely related to whether the NP is intended to be conjoint or disjoint in reference with the subject NP of the main clause. Based on the two theoretical notions of Topicality and Accessibility, I propose two hypotheses to account for the preferred patterns of inter-clausal NP anaphora in Chinese complex sentences. The results of the data analyses corroborate the two hypotheses.

Keywords: conjoint reference, disjoint reference, subordinate clause, topicality
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Basic concepts
      • 1.1.1The notion of anaphora
      • 1.1.2Types of sentences in Chinese
    • 1.2The problem
  • 2.Topicality and anaphora
    • 2.1The identification of topic
    • 2.2Topic and preferred co-referential interpretation in Chinese complex sentences
  • 3.Accessibility marking and anaphora
  • 4.Data analysis
    • 4.1Methodological preliminaries
    • 4.2Results and discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.67.08xu
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