The pragmatics of the Chinese marked zero anaphor

Abstract

This article discusses emergent empirical data about the Mandarin Chinese collective suffix ‑men, in that it is able to mark a zero anaphor. This is a marked zero pronoun, a covert element (a zero anaphor) marked by an overt element (‑men). The licensing of this anaphoric element has yet to be captured, which is approached using the revised neo-Gricean pragmatic theory of anaphora, as Chinese anaphoric system is pragmatically regulated. The synchronic evidence is carefully reviewed obtained from a variety of genres, and cross-linguistic evidence is brought to the fore from the Korean stranded plural suffix ‑tul, and case stranding in Japanese, suggesting a wider distribution across discourse pro-drop languages. The focus then shifts to how to account for this theoretically by comparing a linguistic pragmatic approach to a syntactic approach, arguing that pragmatics utilizing topic-chains straightforwardly accounts for this new type of zero anaphor.