Zero Anaphora in Chinese—the State of Art

Anaphora has always been a focus of linguistic researches,and the anaphora resolution is also of utmost importance to natural language processing(NLP).This paper introduces theoretical researches on the zero anaphora (ZA) in Chinese from four aspects,namely,syntax,pragmatics,discourse analysis and cognitive linguistics.The paper also summarizes how zero anaphors are used and distributed in different languages and various styles of writing. In terms of natural language processing,there are some substantial researches made on ZA in Chinese,such as the ZA-resolution models based on the Centering Theory,HNC-based analysis of ZA with its chunk-sharing model and DRT theory based efforts.The paper concludes by suggesting that NLP experts should pay more attention to theoretical researches of linguistics,while linguists engaged in this field should also orient their researches toward formalization of natural languages.