| Existential Sentences have always been the focus of attention for Chinese as well as foreign researchers. Based on the theories in sentence semantics, this thesis analyzes the mistakes EFL learners make with English existential sentences, with a view to accounting for them.This thesis makes an analysis of 71 example sentences that are carefully chosen from previous researches on the English existential sentences, identifying and categorizing the mistakes and analyzing the mistakes from the perspective of the semantics, and then puts forward the reasons of the mistakes.The mistakes in English existential sentences include constituents omission, misformation, blend and other mistakes. Constituents omission includes copula omission and relative pronoun omission in embedded clauses. Such mistakes as copula omission can be accounted for by employing the theory of participant (theme) in sentence semantics. Mistake with relative pronoun omission in embedded clauses can be accounted for by resorting the relation between thematic roles and grammatical relations. The one-to-one correspondence between the noun phrase and the thematic role dismisses a sentence which has two subjects at the same syntactic level as improper. Misformation includes have substitution, subject-verb disagreement and wrong surrogate subject it, which may be explained through the use of the relation between the verbs and thematic role grid, and the theory of participants (theme) in sentence semantics respectively. The kind of mistake in there + predicate verb may be explained by using the situation theory in sentence semantics. Such predicate verbs as disappear and depart can't be used in English existential sentences because disappear means completely cease to exist.The thesis is a good attempt in the study of English existential sentences, in that it may help EFL learners as well teachers better understand the difficult points in learning or teaching English existential sentences, thus, facilitating EFL teaching.
|
PDF Full Text Request