ABSTRACT

Existential sentences are common in almost every language and they play an important role in both English and Chinese. This paper conducts a comparative study of English and Chinese existential sentences from the aspects of structure, semantics and pragmatics, hoping to find out the similarities and differences between English and Chinese. English existential sentences and Chinese existential sentences have the same deep structure and they express similar semantic contents. Besides, their pragmatic functions are also similar no matter whether it is informational function, textual function or interpersonal function. In terms of the differences between them, the biggest one is their common linear orders in the sentence structure. The structure of an English existential sentence is usually “There+ V+ NP (+ Locative Adverbial +Temporal Adverbial)”, while in a Chinese existential sentence, there is no introductory word as there in English, and the locative or temporal phrases must appear at the forepart of the sentence. Based on the comparative study, this thesis provides beneficial suggestions for the acquisition and teaching of English existential sentences and for the translation of English and Chinese existential sentences.

Key words: existential sentences; comparison between English and Chinese; acquisition; teaching; translation 

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Previous Studies of EES and CES-3

2.2 The Existing Shortcomings at Present-4

Chapter Three  THE COMPARISON BETWEEN EES AND CES-6

3.1 From the Structure Aspect-6

3.2 From the Semantics Aspect-6

3.2.1 The generic reference of the existing subject-8

3.2.2 The agentivity of the existing subject-9

3.3 From the Pragmatics Aspect-10

3.3.1 The informational function-10

3.3.2 The textual function-11

3.3.3 The interpersonal function-11

Chapter Four  THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY-13

4.1 The Acquisition of EES-13

4.2 The Teaching of EES-14

4.3 The Translation of EES and CES-15

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-18

REFERENCES-20