The reference system of modern Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese does not have a gender or number system. The existence of the categories subject and object in the language is a controversial issue. The verb does not code any semantic features of the participants. The grammatical system of Mandarin Chinese includes the following functions and their coding means, through which the identity of the participants in the proposition can be established: no instructions to identify the referent (coded by bare nouns); identification of the referent as the same as the immediately preceding participant or as a participant within the environment of speech (coded by the omission of nominal expression); contrastive focus with the previously mentioned participant or a participant within the speech environment (coded by pronouns); deduction of the referent from the current context (coded by the proximate demonstrative); deduction of the referent from the remote context (coded by the remote demonstrative); individuated token of a class (coded by the numeral ‘one’ plus classifier). © Zygmunt Frajzyngier (2023).