Existential Sentences In English And Chinese:A Contrastive Study Under The Framework Of Minimalist Program

As one kind of special sentence pattern, the existential sentence abounds in both English and Chinese, expressing the meaning of existence, appearance and disappearance of an entity.However, English and Chinese existential sentences are quite different in many aspects.Therefore, this thesis is intended to explore the differences and similarities of existential sentences in English and Chinese through a contrastive study. To be more specific, the pattern“there + be/VP + LP” is our main focus in English while in Chinese “LP + VP + NP” pattern is to be considered.Although a large number of researchers have been engaged in the study of English and Chinese existential sentences at home and abroad, no agreement has been reached about the following questions. First of all, in regard to the subject in English existential sentences, the question that whether “there” is the subject as well as that how “there” occurs in the subject position remain indeterminate, which is of the same in Chinese existential sentences. Secondly,in terms of verbs in existential sentences, the features of verbs have been the focus of the debate.Thirdly, discussions on the indefiniteness of NPs after the verbs are in suspense. Therefore, the author intends to explore the syntactic status of the subject, the features of verbs and the properties of NP after the verbs on the basis of previous studies, hoping to have a further understanding of the existential sentences in English and Chinese.The thesis is based on the Minimalist Program of Generative Grammar. The following are findings concerning similarities and differences of English and Chinese existential sentences.First, in regard to the syntactic status of subject, the expletive subject “there” in English can be viewed as the affix that is followed by NumP and PP. Likewise, in Chinese, the locative word used as subject can also be regarded as the affix ahead of its nouns. As for the differences, there are mainly two points:(I) In English existential sentences, semantic features of the expletive subject-“there” are granted by the NumP and the PP following it. However, in Chinese existential sentences, the semantic features of the subject-LP come from the phrase itself instead of other elements.(II) The initial generation position of subject is different. In English existential sentences, the expletive subject “there” is generated from the position of spec-VP while in Chinese existential sentences, the subject is generated from the position of spec-vP.Second, features of the verbs in English and Chinese existential sentences exhibit clear differences. Specifically:(I) Most of the verbs in English existential sentences are intransitive verbs while both intransitive and transitive verbs can occur in Chinese existential sentences.(II)Verbs in English existential sentences show the tendency of covert unaccusativity while verbs inChinese ones demonstrate the tendency of overt unaccusativity.Third, properties of NPs after the verbs in existential sentences exibit great similarity. In particular, most of NPs in both languages possess the indefinite tendency, i.e. verbs are usually followed by indefinite NumP.