On The Semantics Of "Shui (Who)" In "Shui (Who)+Shi (Be)+NP"

Most previous studies on "Shui Shi NP (Who is NP)" associated "Shui Shi NP (Who isNP)" with "NP Shi shui (Who is NP)". We review and evaluate the findings of researches onthem, and then we compare the studies on the similarities and differences between them. Bystudying the semantic properties of the two sentence patterns and some other sentencepatterns beyond them we can achieve better understanding of them.There are two theories involved in this thesis: Referential Theory and Situation Theory.The combination of them two offers the theoretical support for this research.We have found that whether the speaker, the auditor and the object referred by NP arepresent in the same discourse situation influences the answers to "shui (who)" in "Shui ShiNP (Who is NP)". If there are only the former two components in a discourse situation, theanswer should be focused on the "sense" of NP, and if only the speaker and the objectindicated by NP (in this case, the object referred to by NP is among the auditors) are present,the answer should be of the "reference" of that object referred by NP. If all the threecomponents, the speaker and the auditor are present, it is necessary to answer the "sense" ofthat object indicated by the NP. What’s more, we can find that these research findings alsoapply to the answers to "shui (who)" in "NP Shi shui (Who is NP)". These researches also showthat a long NP, constituted by personal pronouns, demonstrative pronouns and location nouns cannot be used in "Shui Shi NP (Who is NP)". This also explains why "NP Shi shui (Who is NP)"is more frequently used than "Shui Shi NP (Who is NP)"The results of this study will not only help native Chinese learners to understand "ShuiShi NP (Who is NP)" and "NP Shi shui (Who is NP)", but also help the teachers teachingforeign students Chinese to explain more clearly similarities and differences of these twosentence patterns. These findings can help to eliminate the bewilderedness on the part offoreign students caused by different orders as well as the differences between the applicationsof English and Chinese words. Foeign students can understand which sorts of NPs can beused in "Shui Shi NP (Who is NP)" and which can be used in "NP Shi shui (Who is NP)".