A Contrastive Study Of English And Chinese Existential Sentences From Perspective Of Iconicity

As a universally used linguistic structure, existential sentence (ES) has long beenattracted the attention of scholars in China and foreign countries. So far，the researches ofexistential sentence are mainly based on three approaches, namely, descriptive approach,generative approach and functional approach. These appraoches have contributed a lot to ourunderstanding of existential structure. But, most of the researches are concentrated on theinternal structure, neglecting the external factors. This thesis, based on theory of iconicityfrom cognitive linguistics, starts a comparison between English existential sentence (EES)and Chinese Existential Sentence (CES) from perspectives of syntax, semantics andpragmatics, to find out similarities and differences between EES and CES. Furthermore, thisthesis aims to elaborate the mapping relationship between language and cognition, and toexplore whether human thought process of recognizing things has universality.With the development of cognitive linguistic studies, scholars find that the relationshipbetween language form and its content (the signifier and signified) is not entirely arbitrary, butmotivated and demonstrable (Wu Weishan199). The theory of iconicity, a prominentcognitive theory, aims to find the certain connection between language structure andconceptual structure, and to reveal the mapping relationship between language and cognition.Based on theory of iconicity, this thesis attempts to make a contrastive study of fourkinds of mapping relationships between language structure and conceptual structure in EESand CES. These four kinds of mapping relationships are the four types of principles oficonicity including the principle of sequence iconicity, the principle of distance iconicity, theprinciple of quantity iconicity and the principle of markedness iconicity.These four mapping relationships indicate that the human thoughts are common inrecognizing “someplace exists something”. First and foremost, the sequence of existentialsentence in English and Chinese conforms to James H-Y Tai’s The Principle of SequenceScope (TPSC) that the linguistic structures with smaller scope follow the elements denotedlarger scope. In addition, the information sequence of EES and CES also tallies with ThePrinciple of Temporal Sequence (PTS) that the order of language structures mirrors the orderof happening events. Secondly, the distance or closeness between the constituents ofexistential sentence is in accordance with the distance or closeness of concepts they represent.The existential entity and the location are connected by the existential verb. The distancebetween verb and location equals to the distance between verb and existential entity.Therefore, the distance of these three basic components is equal. Thirdly, from angle of quantity iconicity, the more complex of the existential structure is, the more complicated andunpredictable of the conceptual structure will be. Finally, compared with unmarked structure,marked sentence often conveys additional information by exchanging the position ofstructures or adding marked words.Based on this study, it is concluded that the English existential sentence and its Chinesecounterpart are common to a large degree in mapping relationships and human thoughtprocess. Since Chinese and English belong to different language families, there also existsome differences between them. Firstly, English adopts the cognitive strategy of“moving-object”, perceiving things from small to large, part to whole; While, Chinese adoptsthe reverse strategy of “moving-ego”, from whole to part, outside to content. In terms ofquantity iconicity, the specific location in English existential sentence can be omitted. But thelocation in Chinese cannot be omitted, if omitted, it can be figured out through the context.Chinese existential sentence can express additional information by using marked words orexchanging the position of structure, while, English existential sentence can’t.On the basis of analyzing the principles of iconicity in EES and CES, this thesis alsostudies the prototypical structures of EES and CES; the indefiniteness effect andunpredictability of noun phrases and the distribution of information. In brief, this thesisattends to verify that:(i) Language is not completely arbitrary, it mirrors the conceptualstructure of human mind.(ii) Underlying the mapping relationship between language structureand conceptual structure, the commonness in English existential sentence and Chineseexistential sentence is larger than their differences.(iii) The human thought process is similarin recognizing “someplace exists something”.According to a systematic study, this thesis proves that the principle of iconicity canprovide a more reasonable and scientific explanation for existential sentence. The study ofinternal structure from external factors of language is significant for our understanding ofrelationship between human thought and language structure, revealing of the nature oflanguage, also significant for our translation from one language to another.