A Contrastive Cognitivist Study Of English And Chinese Existential Sentences

There might be some empirically-based contrastive studies conducted on the English-Chinese existential sentences(ESs), however, these previous studies are to some extents not exhaustive. This thesis reports a contrastive study on English and Chinese existential sentences from a cognitive perspective. The data of English and Chinese ESs were selected from the American novel The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Miller Hemingway and the Chinese novel The Golden Cangue by Ellen Chang respectively due to their identical era characteristics. Through careful and detailed investigations into the similarities and differences of the English and Chinese ESs in the two novels, the thesis has arrived at the following findings:There are some common features in both English and Chinese ESs: both English and Chinese ESs can be classified into prototypical and peripheral sub-types; both indicate a kind of existence or existential state;both have embodied the principles of the sequential iconicity and distance iconicity in cognitive expressions; both English and Chinese ESs accord with the human cognitive structures, namely, from the ground to the figure, from the given information to new information.The thesis also finds that there are some unique characteristics in either English or Chinese ESs: the structure of ESs in Chinese can be regarded as the prototype of ESs in that it conforms to the universal law of existential sentences, whereas the empty pro-form of ESs in English proves to be less representative; Chinese ESs possess two structures that are the schematic structure of the container and that of chain respectively, while those in English are merely represented by one structure that is schematic of a container.This study might help people to better understand the structures and further the nature of English-Chinese ESs. What’s more, the similarities between English-Chinese ESs can offer a cut-short to the acquisition of ESs in English and Chinese languages and improve the learning efficiency for those who learn English or Chinese as a foreign language. Language teachers can also benefit from this study when they are giving instructions of the ESs. In addition, the contrastive study on English-Chinese ESs in this thesis can offer a supplement to the former research.