A Comparative Study Of Existential Sentences In Chinese And "There Be" Sentences In English

The existential sentence is a most common sentence pattern in oral and writtenChinese. It is also a primary language point in TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a ForeignLanguage) practices and, at the same time, a headache for many foreign Chineselearners. However, in the field of TCFL, comparative studies of existential sentencesin Chinese and “there be” sentences in English have been unfruitful. Relevant studiesoften just focus Chinese linguistics, making the research findings rathercontroversial and unpractical. To sum up, relevant studies failed to offer a solution tohow to correct the mistakes made by foreign students in learning Chinese existentialsentences.To make the research findings more beneficial for Chinese teaching, this paperutilizes the Figure-Ground Theory in cognitive linguistics to examine thecommonalities and particularities of existential sentences in Chinese and “there be”sentences in English. Based on Chinese linguistics, this paper conducts itscomparison from the perspectives of definition, categorization, semantic connotation,information transmission etc. This paper draws the conclusion that manycommonalities in sentence structure and cognitive model exist between the two andthat some distinct particularities also deserve our due attention.Utilizing the language materials from the HSK Dynamic Composition Corpusof BLCU, this paper then goes on to analyze the grammar setting and explanation infour representative and widely-used TCFL textbooks, and predict the importantlanguage points and the difficulties that foreign learners may encounter in learningChinese existential sentences. At the end of this paper, teaching suggestions andtactics are provided for different learners at different learning stages as to how to teach “有”existential sentences,“在” existential sentences,“是” existential sentencesand “V+着”existential sentences, which will sure to serve TCFL practices.