Abstract

Centering is a model of the conversants’ center of attention in discourse that is concerned with the relationship of attentional state, inferential complexity and the form of referring expressions. Since the theory was proposed in early 1980s, it has aroused wide public concern in the fields of anaphora resolution and parametric study. However, there are few studies on discourse production and coherence analysis of discourse, especially Chinese discourse. This paper adopts empirical research to apply centering theory to discourse processing in Chinese so that it can be useful for language understanding. An experiment was carried out. Forty 5-year-old Chinese children studied in Hongxing Kindergarten participated in this experiment, and they were divided into two groups. Each group children was asked to retell the story after listen to the stories which have same topic but different coherence. During the experiment, children’s performance and their retelling were recorded. The result found that there is a relationship between center, coherence and comprehension of children. In detail, children from group 1 have good comprehension for story 1 which has good coherence and most of children from group 2 cannot understand the story 2 which has bad coherence. And the experimental results are in good agreement with centering theory, so the experiment test centering theory in Chinese discourse.

Keywords: Centering Theory, Local Coherence, Chinese, Discourse processing, Children

Contents

Abstract

摘  要

1. Introduction-1

1.1 Purpose of the Study-1

1.2 Object, Method and Aim of the Study-1

1.3 Significance of Centering Theory and Discourse Coherence-2

1.4 Layout of the Thesis-2

2. Centering Theory-3

2.1 Purpose of Centering Theory-3

2.2 Background and Development of Centering Theory-3

2.3 The Basic Theory of Centering Theory-4

2.3.1 Definition-4

2.3.2 Claims of Centering Theory-5

3. Centering Theory and Discourse Coherence-8

3.1 Definition of Coherence-8

3.2 Coherence Model of Centering Theory-8

3.2.1 Discourse Coherence of Centering Theory-8

3.2.2 Correlation of Rule 2 and Discourse Coherence-8

3.2.3 Quantified Measurement of the Discourse Coherence-8

4. Research Design-10

4.1 Hypothesis-10

4.2 A Pilot Test-10

4.3 Experiment-12

4.3.1 Method-12

4.3.2 Results-15

4.3.3 Discussion-17

5. Conclusion-18

5.1 Conclusion of the Result-18

5.2 Theoretical and Practical Implications-18

5.3 Limitation-18

References-20

Appendix-22