The Syntax-Discourse Interface of the Mandarin Anaphoric Elements: Interpreting Referential Dependencies with File Cards

Abstract

Referential dependencies could be established at different levels of representation: syntactic (within the computation system) and extra-syntactic (within the C-I interface). In comparison with the well-studied syntactic dependency, how the extra-syntactic dependencies are processed and encoded for interpretation still begs for further clarification. Mandarin Chinese, known to be discourse-oriented and lack overt morpho-syntactic features, has the puzzling long-distance binding phenomenon. Using the File Card system (Avrutin, 1999; 2004), this thesis will look into the Mandarin anaphoric elements whose referential dependencies are abundantly found on the discourse levels of representation, in order to develop a Syntax-Discourse Interface model which could eventually be applied to account for some psycholinguistic phenomena pertaining to the interpretation of referential relations.