Reference Contrast in Chine and English Text
Name: 常首鸣
Code: 2008142
Class: 08级外应2班
Abstract: Reference is one of the most important grammatical devices for cohesion of text. It is a kind of mantic relationship, which indicates that certain items in text can be retrieved from elwhere. Reference in both Chine and English languages can be divided into personal reference, demonstrative reference and comparative reference. However, there are distinctive features in the manipulation of references in the two languages, i.e., more personal and demonstrative references are ud in English while more zero-references and repetitions of words in Chine, which corresponds to the fact that Chine demonstrates paratactic prominence while English hypotactic prominence.
爬山的英文Key words: reference; cohesion of text; contrastive analysis
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1．Introduction
According to Halliday and Hasan’s theory of the textual cohesion, reference belongs to the grammatical devices for cohesion. They point that in a text some words, instead of being interpreted mantically in their own right, make reference to something el for their interpretation；that is to say, reference, as a manitc relation, rves as a point where the interpretation of a component in the text is dependent upon that of another. From the perspective of pragmatic function, Halliday and Hasan categorize reference into two types：exophora and endophor. The former means that the interpretation of some element in the text is not to be found in the text at all, but in the situation, and the latter is just the opposite situation of the former；and endophor could be further divided into two sub-typesled display：cataphora—indicating that the presuppod element should be somewhere in an earlier ntence, and anaphora—meaning that the element would be found in the following ntence. Therefore reference is the interpretative relations between the object and its referent within the inter-ntential structure.
According to Halliday and Hasan’s theory, there are three types of reference：personal, demonstrative, and comparative, among which the first two are the major type. The paper will contrast the three cohesive devices in Chine and English text respectively.
2．Personal reference
Personal reference is realid by personal pronoun（such as I, you, he she, they him her them,and so on）, posssive determiner（your, his, her, their）,and posssive pronoun（mine, his hers, theirs）；while in Chine reference relation is established by personal pronoun（他，她，他们）. In language u, presonal reference is the third person pronoun, the third person posssive determiner, and the third posssive pronoun. Although in Chine and English there are two different personal systems which can not correspond each other precily, the two systems function almost alike in cohesion. However their differences can be obrved in the following aspects：
（1are you rious）Expression and Form
Most English personal pronouns u “gender” , “number” , and “ca” to express diffferent forms；but oral Chine adopts “ta” as all the third person forms, the pronunciation indicating no differences between gender, people and object, human and non-human, and in written form the three chine characters —“他”、“她”、“它” were coined after “the May Fourth” Movement, and when added numeral or a Chine character “们”规则英文 after the three characters, their plural forms are realid respectively. In English personal pronoun has three ca forms：subjective ca, objective ca, and posssive ca；and Chine personal pronoun has no ca changes, and its posssive ca is achieved by adding Chine character “的” after the corresponding personal pronoun form.
（2）泰戈尔新月集Reflexive Pronoun
This is the major difference between Chine and English in personal reference. Chine personal form “自己”（lf）includes both MYSELF and YOURSELF（singual form）becomeand so on. It could be ud as reference alone, having the independent reference function. Oexpand
n the country, English reflexive, such as MYSELF and TOURSELF and so on, must appear together with the corresponding personal pronoun, or be put a preposition before it. For examples ：
[1a] 我高兴得放声大笑。自己知道这是一次真正的精神解放。
[1b] I happily laughed a hearty laugh. I knew it was real relief of mind.
In [1b], “mylf” can not be ud alone, and even“I…mylf” is strongly suggested not to ud here.
（3）There is no relative pronoun in Chine. It is where Chine is different from English. Therefore in many Chine texts personal pronoun can be expresd in the English translation by the corresponding relative pronoun. Here are some examples：
研究生入学考试科目[2a] “ I have had such a nice time,” said Carrie, when it was all over and they were coming out.
“Yes，indeed,” added Drouet, who was not in the least aware that a battle had been fought and his defens weakened.（Theodore Dreir: Sister Carrie）
[2b] “今晚我过得很愉快。”戏结束后他们走出戏院时，嘉莉说。
“是的，确实很愉快。”杜洛艾也说。他还不知道，一场仗刚刚打完，他的防御已经被削弱了。（王惠君，王惠玲译：《嘉莉妹妹》）
（4）Personal pronoun is more frequently ud for reference in English than in Chine for in English text personal reference is expresd in the corresponding Chine translation by lexical cohesion which us the plural form of the original word. It is a tendency that nominal phra is ud to refer to objects that has no life.
