Publications

Publication details [#6202]

Li, Charles N. and Sandra A. Thompson. 1979. Third-person pronouns and zero-anaphora in Chinese discourse. In Givón, Talmy, ed. Syntax and semantics 12: Discourse and Syntax. Academic Press. pp. 311–335.

Publication type

Article in book

Publication language

English

Keywords

background information | pronoun | third person | written language | zero anaphora

Language as a subject

Chinese, Mandarin

Annotation

L. and T. argue that zero-anaphora in Chinese written discourse is so widespread and so unconstrained that it is the normal mode of NP-anaphora in Chinese, the interpretation of referents being inferred on the basis of semantic and pragmatic knowledge and information present in the discourse itself.