Edited by Wei Wang
[Studies in Chinese Language and Discourse 13] 2020
► pp. 11–36
Chinese is described as a null subject language, in that the subject of a clause can be unexpressed (covert). While a large amount of previous literature has focused on null subjects in isolated sentences, this study is concerned with null subjects in Chinese written narrative discourse within the framework of the Centering Theory. I examined the distribution of null subjects and their antecedents to explore the properties of null subjects, especially the relation between the function of null subjects and centering transitions. My hypothesis that the use of null subjects strongly relates to the CONTINUE transition is basically supported. Specifically, 96.48% are referential null subjects. Besides, I found that null subjects can also occur in other transition types, particularly in SMOOTH transitions (52.59%). The difference is that null subjects in CONTINUE transitions are overwhelmingly referential null subjects (96.48%), while they are non-referential null subjects (60.66%) in SMOOTH transitions.