CHAPTER ONEINTRODUCTION
1.1 The phenomena
It’s acknowledged that a third-person pronoun is mainly used anaphorically with afull- form prior reference as its antecedent, or deictically with its referent present in thephysical environment of the conversation. However, contrary to this view, there arestill some pronouns (third person pronouns) occurring without explicit antecedents, ascan be observed in spoken discourse. For example, In this excerpt, there is no NP that can be counted as antecedent of the pronoun “they”.However, the hearer can still track the referent for “they” through the immediateconversation. That is to say, a pronoun used in this way won’t cause anymisunderstanding for the hearer. The example mentioned above is about the use of athird-person pronoun in plural form. Now let’s look at an example of this type insingular form, shown as follows. As we know, the third-person pronoun in singular form inoral English is comparatively easier to be construed than that in Chinese. It’s knownthat English third-person pronouns in three different forms –“he/she/it”– can beidentified by the pronunciation. However, for those in Chinese, though having threedifferent forms such as “他”(he), “她”(she) and “它”(it) in written discourse, cannotbe differentiated in oral Chinese because of the same pronunciation as “Ta”. Below issuch an example found in the Chinese conversation. We might check whether it willcause trouble for listeners’ comprehension.
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1.2 Research objectives and research questions
Compared with pronouns occurring with antecedents, LIPs are relatively rare either inEnglish or in Chinese conversation. Besides, research on LIPs in Chinese starts muchlater than that in English. Nevertheless, we can still find a certain number of LIPs inour data. Therefore, the research on LIPs in Chinese verbal communication is needed.We will conduct in-depth research on the distributional features of LIPs in the presentstudy. Moreover, we will go on to carry out a qualitative study to give a reasonableanalysis of such uses of Chinese LIPs (the third-person pronouns excluding “它” and“它们”) from a cognitive-pragmatic perspective in a systematic way. The analysis isboth data-based and theory-driven. After the analysis of why hearers are able tounderstand LIPs correctly, we will further investigate the functions lying behind suchuses. Namely, why speakers use LIPs rather than other types of linguistic forms inChinese conversation? With these objectives in our mind, we intend to answer thefollowing questions:
1) How many types of LIPs are there in Chinese conversation?
2) How do addressees interpret the different types of LIPs?
3) What functions are LIPs expected to realize in verbal communication?
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CHAPTER TWOLITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Introduction
Though LIPs are not as pervasive as normal pronouns in daily conversation, researchon this particular phenomenon has attracted the interest of many scholars both athome and abroad. Comparatively, research on this topic is done much earlier inEnglish or other European languages than in Chinese. Generally speaking, the coreissue of LIP study is the recognition and comprehension of LIPs (Gerrig, et al., 2011).This phenomenon has been recognized as ‘pronouns without antecedents’,‘unheralded pronoun’, ‘indirect anaphora’, ‘locally initial indexical’ and etc.Concerning interpretation of LIPs, some researchers suggest that common groundplays a key role in the comprehension of LIPs (Greene, et al., 1994; Gerrig, et al.,2011). Some scholars suggest that addressees should rely on different types ofcontextual information so as to find the correct referent (Qin Hongwu, 2001; XuYulong, 2004; Zhu Yingchun, 2000, 2003, 2004; Fang, Jingmin, 2004). In this chapter,we will present the previous studies on LIPs in English and then in Chineserespectively. And then we will give a summary of these studies and point out thelimitations involved.
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2.2 Previous studies on LIPs in English
The research on locally initial pronouns in English has a quite long history and theextant studies by Western scholars are mainly concentrated on the identification andcomprehension of LIPs. It was Gerrig (1986) who first defined unheralded pronounsas pronouns without an explicit antecedent in the immediate context. Later on, basedon naturally occurring data from French and English, Francis Cornish (1996) classified antecedentless anaphora as one kind of anaphora rather than dexis, andclaimed that such anaphors are interpreted not in terms of the physical situation itselfas theydo in the case of ‘exophora’, but in terms of a conceptual representation of thesituation. Besides, it’s also mentioned that the anaphor’s predicative and utterancecontext plays an important role in solving these ‘antecedentless’ anaphoric pronouns.With reference to Santa Barara Corpus of Spoken American English, Gundel et al.(2005) made a quite specific classification of antecedentless pronouns, of which theso-called LIP is similar to one subtype ‘inferrables’ – those referring to entities thatare inferable from an activated frame or script, or which are otherwise easilyaccommodated. They also pointed out that the inferrables have what Cornish (1996)calls ‘antecedent trigger’. Such inferrables are also called as ‘associative anaphor’ byHawkins (1978) and ‘indirect anaphor’ by Erküand Gundel (1987).
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CHAPTER THREE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK......13
3.1 Introduction........13
3.2 Delimitation of LIPs in our data ......13
3.3 Understanding Reference Point Model ........15
3.4 Common Ground Theory .....20
3.5 A tentative framework for the present study ......24
CHAPTER FOUR DISTRIBUTION OF LIPS IN CHINESE CONVERSATION .......27
4.1 Introduction........27
4.2 LIPs with antecedent triggers.....28
4.2.1 NP antecedent triggers .....29
4.2.2 Non-NP antecedent triggers .........33
4.3 LIPs without antecedent triggers .....35
4.4 Summary ......36
CHAPTER FIVE INTERPRETATION OF LIPS IN CHINESE CONVERSATION.....37
5.1 Introduction........37
5.2 Analysis of LIPs with antecedent triggers .........38
5.3 Analysis of LIPs without antecedent triggers ....43
5.4 Summary ......49
CHAPTER SIXFUNCTIONS OF LIPS IN CHINESE CONVERSATION
6.1 Introduction
Chapter Five has demonstrated to us that it is possible for the addressee to interpretLIPs provided with enough CG and the suitable triggers serving as the RPs. SinceLIPs are commonly used by speakers in conversations, they must be used to performsome specific functions so as to successfully promote the communication betweenspeakers and addressees. This is consistent with the viewpoints of linguists in the fieldof functional grammar who emphasize the functions of linguistic structures. Thischapter will address what purposes the speakers employ LIPs in Chineseconversations for. That is to say, what are the functions or motivations in using LIPs?As shown in the previous chapter, the process for interpreting LIPs is essentiallya cognitive one in which CG plays a significant role. In this process, the referent ofLIP, though existing outside the current conversation, is brought into theconversationalists’ mind through the shared information. To some extent, thespeaker’s use of LIP in a conversation is due to the fact that the referent of the LIP isalready in the speaker’s and addressee’s memory. Therefore, by using an LIP, thespeaker tends to claim a co-reference with the tacit referent existing in theinterlocutor ’s mind. This way, coherence of the current discourse is established andthe textual function is realized. In addition, by using LIPs rather than the full- formreference, speakers aim to achieve the particular interpersonal function.
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Conclusion
The author has made a detailed analysis of LIPs in Chinese conversation inaccordance with the theoretical framework. The present study has answered the threeresearch questions put forward in Section 1.2: Basically, LIPs in our data fall into two major categories: LIPs with antecedenttriggers and those without antecedent triggers. Statistics show that the former is in themajority and can be further categorized concerning the form of their ATs. It’s foundthat an AT can be an NP or a non-NP like a VP. Yet, those with NP antecedent triggersoutnumber those with non-NP antecedent triggers. Additionally, there’s a stereotypicrelation holding between an NP antecedent trigger and its referent. Six types ofstereotypic relations has been discovered, which in order of ratio are part-whole,place-agent, theme-agent, whole-part, parallel co-occurrence, and abstract-concrete.However, in very rare cases the relation appears to be non-stereotypic.
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Reference (omitted)