Ntulekorita obinime n’asusu Igbo na Chainiiz

Abstract

Anaphor is a type of noun phrase which has no independent reference, but refers to some other sentence constituent. It is a word used to avoid repetition. The referent of an anaphor is usually determined by its antecedent. This research uses the theory of contrastive analysis of Lado (1957) and the binding theory of Chomsky (1981) to compare Igbo and Chinese anaphors and ascertain their similarities and differences. Findings from this research show that Igbo has only one expression of anaphor, that is, reflexive, while Chinese has two anaphoric expressions, viz; reflexive and reciprocal. To the issue of binding theory, the two languages do not align completely with this theory. Chinese bare reflexive, zìjÇ accepts long distant binding which contradicts the binding theory. Igbo, on the other hand, does not accept long distant binding.