Annali di Ca’ Foscari. Serie orientale

Mapping Referents in Chinese and Italian: A Corpus-Based Analysis of Anaphora, Deixis, and Other Referential Relations

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Abstract

This paper provides an overview of different types of referential expressions, including deixis and anaphora, and explores the various linguistic forms used to encode these relationships in Chinese and Italian – two languages that exhibit distinct reference-tracking systems: the former largely inference-based, the latter primarily morpho-syntactic. To this end, the study examines empirical data from both large and small corpora, spanning a range of genres and text types. The contrastive analysis includes both qualitative and quantitative observations, highlighting similarities and differences, and revealing novel or previously understudied patterns. The results have implications not only from a typological perspective but also for applied fields such as natural language processing and second/foreign language acquisition.


Open access | Peer reviewed

Submitted: April 23, 2025 | Accepted: June 30, 2025 | Published July 31, 2025 | Language: en

Keywords Chinese • Deixis • Corpus study • Anaphora • Referential relationships • Italian

Copyright © 2025 Anna Morbiato. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/AnnOr/2385-3042/2025/01/012