Referential expressions in Chinese

The article is dedicated to the examination of referential expressions in the Chinese language. Referential expressions are formal means deployed in the coding of reference. The primary aim of the article is to offer an overview of the basic properties of Chinese referential system with the focus on lexically full means (such as common nouns, proper names, deictic words). Reduced referential expressions, such as pronouns, are not discussed here. In recent works, Chinese, traditionally considered to be an articleless language, has received more attention due to the of discussion of more or less grammaticalized means coding referential meanings of definiteness and indefiniteness. This results of the research are of significant importance not only for theoretical linguistics but also for applied fields such as translation, automatic text processing, and linguistic modeling.

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