Anaphoric patterning in English and Mandarin narrative production

Abstract

This study investigates how entities introduced in discourse are referred to again at later points and what motivates speakers to choose a particular anaphor to manage reference at any given point. A model is proposed which considers the interaction of three factors in determining a speaker's anaphoric choice: cognitive constraints, discourse structure, and pragmatic information. Without structural factors, the use of anaphora appears to be random. Without pragmatic considerations, anaphoric patterning is not complete. This study also reports a comparative study of anaphoric patterning in English and Mandarin narratives. Experimental results demonstrate that speakers of the two historically unrelated languages follow the same general rules in reference tracking during narrative production.