Machine Identification Of German Equivalents Of Chinese Existential Sentences Under The Cognitive-Linguistic Perspective-A Trial Based On The Translation Of Liu Cixin's The Three Body By Martina Hasse

The existential sentence represents a special sentence structure in the Chinese.It denotes the state of an object in a specific time and space,namely its appearance,existence or disappearance.In a typical Chinese existential sentence the subject is not the agent,but a location.There is no statement of "existential sentences" in the German grammar.However,according to the theory of construction grammar,the sentences expressing the same meaning should have similarities in their forms.Therefore,sentences in German which describe states of things should also have similar forms.A lot of research has been conducted on existential sentences in Chinese and English contexts.Nevertheless,there is rare research on German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences.The existing documents have only described and compared the Chinese existential sentences and their German translations and aim at assisting foreign language teaching.Meanwhile,the author has realized that linguistic research can take full advantage of science technology,and the sentence structure is the cornerstone of machine identification of the sentence type.This thesis combines the cross-cultural comparison method with the construction grammar theory and mainly discusses the following two issues:(1)How do the German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences look like?(2)Can German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences be identified by machine?The German equivalents are observed from the perspective of Chinese existential sentences and their similar forms are refined in order to provide screening conditions for machine identification.The research material is the popular science fiction"The Three Body"and its German translation.In this thesis,the German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences are exhaustively searched,and their sentence structures are described in detail.By comparing the sentence structures and predicate components between Chinese existential sentences and their German equivalents,the idea of machine identification of the German expressions is obtained.The author finds that the German sentences that express the existential meaning contain place adverbs and verbs that can express the meaning of existence(nearly 70%of which are sein,stehen,es gibt,erscheinen),which can be used as parameters for machine identification.Meanwhile,because the German grammar strictly adheres to the sentence frame structure,the position of the sentence component in German is not as important as that in Chinese in the machine identification process.Place adverbs and the object being described can be exchanged with each other.Therefore,the position of the sentence component is not selected as the parameter for machine identification.Based on the research above,the author has come up with the idea of machine identification for the German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences.A program fragment is written in python and tested.The author finds that all sentences which satisfy the parameters above can be screened.Therefore,it is feasible to identify the German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences by computer.However,there exist also errors in the credibility test.The sentences expressing existential meaning are not all screened,which lies in the incomplete corpus of verbs.And those which are not German equivalents of Chinese existential sentences are screened.Therefore,new parameters should be added into the program in order to purify the results.Further research can start from the following points:First,expand the corpus of verbs in German that can express the existential meaning;second,conduct research on the characteristics of other selected sentences,and write supplementary procedures to purify the screening results;third,it is possible to use more advanced information technology such as deep learning to improve the credibility of machine recognition.