Cataphoric Pronouns------ A Comparison between English and Chinese
While anaphoric pronouns have been a hot spot of discussion, little ink has been spoiled on cataphoric pronouns, which occur less frequently both in English and in Chinese. This paper aims at a tentative analysis of the cataphoric use of pronouns in English and Chinese to reveal certain similarities as well as differences between these two languages.
1. Introduction
English possesses a fair number of pronouns that take their interpretation from some other part of the sentence or discourse, as in the following example, in which the anaphoric device is in boldface and the antecedent, from which it takes its interpretation, is italicized:
(1) Two boys stood near a jeweller’s shop. They saw a man break its window and steal all the watches. They ran after him because they took him for a thief.
As the example shows, the pronouns are co-referential with the preceding Lexical NPs, i.e. the antecedents. However, the antecedent is not always placed before, as in (2):
(1’) Near him, Dan saw a snake.
The placement of antecedent suggests a difference between anaphoric pronouns (AP; as in (1)) and cataphoric ones (CP; as in (2)), that is, those that look back in the text for their interpretation and those that look forward for their interpretation.
The pronoun makes too large a category to be explored in this paper. Therefore, my analysis will be within the scope of