A Corpus-Driven Study on Three Elements of Third Personal Pronoun Endophora in English Abstracts of Chinese and Foreign Theses

The corpus is applied to compare and analyze three elements of the third personal pronoun endophora in English abstracts of Chinese and foreign theses. It is discovered that there is no significant difference in the total frequency of third personal pronoun endophora used by Chinese and foreign masters, but there is a significant difference in three elements of third personal pronoun endophora. Native Chinese-speaking masters tend to choose “it” as the anaphor, while native English-speaking masters are inclined to select “them” as the anaphor; antecedents used by native Chinese-speaking masters are mostly consistent with keywords of theses, while antecedents used by native English-speaking masters are rarely consistent with keywords of theses; distances between antecedents and anaphors set by native Chinese-speaking masters are much longer than those set by native English-speaking masters. These findings are beneficial for Chinese masters in terms of better understanding the writing conventions of English abstracts of foreign theses and further improving the language quality of English abstracts in their theses.